Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various bottom-feeding sharks of the family Ginglymostomatidae, having long barbels near the mouth and feeding chiefly at night, especially Ginglymostoma cirratum of tropical and subtropical waters.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
nurse , 7.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various bottom-dwelling
sharks of the family Ginglymostomatidae that have two fleshybarbels hanging from the lower jaw.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun small bottom-dwelling shark of warm shallow waters on both coasts of North America and South America and from southeast Asia to Australia
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[From nurse, any of various kinds of dogfishes or sharks, alteration of earlier nusse, perhaps from earlier and dialectal huss, dogfish (by reanalysis of an huss, a dogfish as a nusse), from Middle English husk, of unknown origin.]
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nurse shark.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.