starfish

UK/ˈstɑː(ɹ)fɪʃ/US/ˈstɑː(ɹ)fɪʃ/

nounA2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,371 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: starfishes

A starfish is a sea creature shaped like a five-pointed star. A starfish in a rock pool, five arms, throw the starfish back.

It moves on hundreds of tiny tube feet, can grow a lost arm back, and eats a mussel by pushing its stomach out through its mouth and digesting the animal in its own shell. Biologists prefer sea star, since a starfish is not a fish.

Definitions of starfish

1nounstarfishA sea creature shaped like a five-pointed star.A2+
“We found a bright orange starfish in a rock pool on the beach.”

starfish is a sea creature.

Where it comes from

Star plus fish, a plain description. Fish was long used for any sea creature, which is how the name came about.

From star + fish.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Insects & Sea Life

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starfish in the wild

About 1,900 species of starfish live on the seabed, and are found in all the world's oceans, from warm, tropical zones to frigid, polar regions.
Starfish
With their appealing symmetrical shape, starfish have played a part in literature and legend.
Starfish
The crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) is a large starfish that preys upon hard coral polyps.
Crown-of-thorns starfish
Backgrounds can be entirely neutral, like a solid backdrop or a cloudless sky; or they can complement the image, like a starfish on the sand.
Simplicity (photography)
The common starfish, common sea star or sugar starfish (Asterias rubens) is the most common and familiar starfish in the north-east Atlantic.
Common starfish

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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