starfish
English
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Etymology
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Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]starfish (plural starfishes or starfish)
- Any of various asteroids or other echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach.
- (obsolete) Any many-armed or tentacled sea invertebrate, whether cnidarian, echinoderm, or cephalopod.
- 1755, Erik Pontoppidan, translated by Isaac Kimbler, Explanation of the Plate of Uncommon Star Fish, Extracted from the Natural History of Norway:
- But the largest of the star-fish kind is that sea monster called kruken, kraken or krabben. [...] As this enormous sea-animal in all probability may be reckoned of the polype, or of the star-fish, kind, it seems that the parts which are seen rising at its pleasure, and are called arms, are properly the tentacula, or feeding instruments, called horns as well as arms.
- (slang) A woman (or, less commonly, a gay man) who reluctantly takes part in sexual intercourse, and lies on the back while spreading the limbs.
- (vulgar, slang, usually in translations of Japanese pornography) The anus.
- Synonym: chocolate starfish
- 2021, Sophie Palmer, Hot Wife: Collection of Explicit Erotic Short Stories:
- Hands separated my ass cheeks while some pervert rimmed my puckered brown starfish.
Synonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]various echinoderms
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Verb
[edit]starfish (third-person singular simple present starfishes, present participle starfishing, simple past and past participle starfished)
- (intransitive) To assume a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
- 1981, Kit Reed, Magic Time, page 229:
- "Oh you damn bastard, why won't you let anybody love you," and then, before I could stop her, she threw herself between us and the glowing suitcase, starfishing in the blaze of light as he blew up.
- 2020, Becky Manawatu, Auē, page 95:
- The freckle on her eye starfished out and the sun began to move over her face like it does below the surface of water.
- (transitive) To form into a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
- 2011, Polly Williams, It Happened One Summer:
- The sea roared up her nostrils, tunnelled into her ears, and flung her forward, then back, the current pulling her fingers apart, starfishing her hands.
See also
[edit]Categories:
- English compound terms
- English 2-syllable words
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- en:Pornography
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- en:Echinoderms