Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various elongated freshwater or anadromous fishes of the family Petromyzontidae, having a jawless sucking mouth with rasping teeth and often attaching to and parasitizing other fish.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A marsipobranchiate fish, of an elongated or eel-like form when adult.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) An eel-like marsipobranch of the genus Petromyzon, and allied genera; called also
lamprey eel andlamper eel . The lampreys have a round, sucking mouth, without jaws, but set with numerous minute teeth, and one to three larger teeth on the palate (seeIllust. ofcyclostomi ). There are seven small branchial openings on each side.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any long slender
primitive eel-likefreshwater and saltwaterfish of thePetromyzontidae family , having asucking mouth withrasping teeth but nojaw .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun primitive eellike freshwater or anadromous cyclostome having round sucking mouth with a rasping tongue
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The lamprey is the octopus, the devil-fish, of these waters, and there is, perhaps, no tragedy enacted here that equals that of one of these vampires slowly sucking the life out of a bass or a trout.
The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: Pepacton John Burroughs 1879
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His death was caused, in the year 1135, by eating too much of the fish called lamprey, and he was buried in
Young Folks' History of England Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862
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Currently, the lamprey is a species of concern, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
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Your 'lamprey' was right on the money, and I agree with Donna as well - I feel the same way about that certain personage.
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Lake Ontario is also plagued with invasive species, such as lamprey and zebra mussels.
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"One of the groups that really gets hit is the other kind of lamprey," Andrews said, adding that the northern brook, silver and American lamprey are three native species vulnerable to the effects of the chemical.
RutlandHerald.com 2008
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[Footnote 809: 'Perhaps a kind of lamprey' (White and Riddle's
The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator Senator Cassiodorus 1872
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Kem has risen through the Voidcorp ranks by latching on lamprey style to rising stars, then stepping aside when those careers faltered.
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A worst-case scenario envisions [the monstrous fish] spreading "like a cancer cell," [said Cameron Davis, senior Great Lakes adviser to Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency], eventually dominating a fishery already damaged by zebra mussels, sea lamprey and other exotic pests ....
Environmental Emergency: Asian Carp Breach Barrier To Great Lakes 2009
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Local favorites include salt cod with crumbled corn-bread, lamprey in red wine, or papas de sarrabulho—a steaming black mash that involves the heart, lungs, liver and throat lining of a pig stewed in the animal's blood.
Within Portugal's Cradle Paul Ames 2012
yarb commented on the word lamprey
A nightmarish creature.
February 19, 2008
treeseed commented on the word lamprey
yarb, read up on the hagfish, its cousin...nightmarish
February 19, 2008
yarb commented on the word lamprey
Argh! So ugly it defies contemplation except in the abstract.
February 19, 2008
sionnach commented on the word lamprey
Silly hobbitses, "lamprey" is just another name for grass.
March 25, 2009
hernesheir commented on the word lamprey
argoseen
May 26, 2011
chained_bear commented on the word lamprey
"Lampreys were a distinctively upper-class food but regarded as extremely dangerous because of their cold and wet nature. King Henry I of England died in 1135 a week after eating lampreys in defiance of his doctor's orders, and this became well enough known to serve as a cautionary although ineffective story."
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 51
Another usage/historical note can be found in comment on jance and on humoral diversity.
November 27, 2017