Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various elongated slimy marine fishes of the class Myxini (family Myxinidae), lacking jaws and vertebrae and having a sucking mouth with toothlike rasps, used for feeding on invertebrates and for burrowing into or scavenging other fish.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
hag , 3.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) See
hag , 4.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun any of several
primitive eellike creatures , of thefamily Myxinidae , having asucking mouth withrasping teeth ; considerededible inJapan , theirskin is used to make a form ofleather
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun eellike cyclostome having a tongue with horny teeth in a round mouth surrounded by eight tentacles; feeds on dead or trapped fishes by boring into their bodies
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Since the 1970s, many evolutionary biologists have considered an eel-like, deep-sea-dwelling creature called the hagfish to be the closest extant relative of a last common ancestor for all backboned creatures.
Wired Top Stories Brandon Keim 2010
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Looking at further opportunities within the industry, the minister pointed to underutilized species such as hagfish, cucumber fish, and different varieties of crab.
The Beacon: News ANDREW ROBINSON 2009
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Game of Life says: repugs constituents as dumber than slime from a hagfish.
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Every morning you get up, jump into the ocean, collect hagfish mucous, crawl back onto the beach, rub the slime all over your body, sunbathe for a few hours, and then let a couple of dozen Haitians sniff you before sitting back down to write all about it.
Archive 2009-01-25 SeattleDan 2009
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I love the smell of hagfish slime under a Haitian sun
Archive 2009-01-25 SeattleDan 2009
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Even sharks are closer cousins to humans than they are to lampreys and hagfish the only modern survivors of the once thriving and diverse group of jawless fishes but again, we call them all fish.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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Saul Alinsky learned from that, and strongly advocated giving up the bombs and rhetoric within their revolutionary dreams, instead entering the old form of society like the hagfish to devour it from the inside.
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I understand that hagfish mucous is very sensitive to temperature variations.
Archive 2009-01-25 SeattleDan 2009
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Even sharks are closer cousins to humans than they are to lampreys and hagfish the only modern survivors of the once thriving and diverse group of jawless fishes but again, we call them all fish.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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Of course you'll also save money by collecting the hagfish yourself hence the flippers and by using low-wage Haitians to monitor mucous degradation.
Archive 2009-01-25 SeattleDan 2009
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