Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A body form of certain cnidarians such as jellyfish, consisting of a dome-shaped structure with a mouth underneath surrounded by tentacles, and in most species constituting the free-swimming sexual stage of the organism.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun zoology Special form that
cnidarians may turn into.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or forty-four species of that genus.
A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America
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The object of this curious arrangement is to enable the whale to catch the little shrimps and small sea-blubbers, called "medusa;", on which it feeds.
Fighting the Whales 1859
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Its hair was full of monsters bound in chains and bent with iron; a medusa for the 1890s.
365 tomorrows » 2009 » December : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2009
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The near perfection of Roman Polanski's Chinatown starts with Diener/Hauser/Bates's haunting art nouveau poster for the film: an emblematic Hokusai wave breaks against Jack Nicholson's silhouette as the smoke from his cigarette floats up to merge with Faye Dunaway's medusa-like hair.
Chinatown: No 1 Philip French 2010
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Her face was saturated with tears and snot and her crazy medusa hair made her look like an escaped mental patient.
'America's Next Top Model' recap: And the winner is... | EW.com 2009
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Its hair was full of monsters bound in chains and bent with iron; a medusa for the 1890s.
365 tomorrows » Savile Row Steel : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2009
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Oh, & the medusa spiders; plenty of them, & also presumably a Smokey apparition.
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Maybe people werent as beautiful as back during the Prettytime, but parties were a lot more interesting: serious surge-monkeys with snake fingers and medusa hair; smart-matter clothes that rippled like flags in a breeze; safety fireworks skittering along the floor, dodging feet and sizzling incense as they passed.
Scott Westerfeld: Uglies Quartet Scott Westerfeld 2010
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The tropes of myth, legend and fairy tale build themselves into my work almost without my thinking about it, and I put that down to a lifetime of loving those stories, which have so much wisdom in them. on 16 Apr 2008 at 8: 22 am Riley medusa on 16 Apr 2008 at 8: 42 am Jeff Wetherington
Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » Once upon a time…(and win a free book!) 2008
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Meadows dominate above 3,800 m and form the only vegetation above 4,000 m along with high-alpine species such as Saussurea medusa.
Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area, China 2009
chained_bear commented on the word medusa
"The Wake of the Medusa" is a song by the Pogues. I think they're singing about the famous ship Medusa, but seeing as the ship was named after the woman, I figured it counts as a songbird. Snake-like hair notwithstanding.
February 10, 2008
sionnach commented on the word medusa
jellyfish, en castellano.
March 18, 2009