Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various free-living chiefly aquatic ciliate flatworms, including the planarians.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Causing little currents or vortexes of water by ciliary action, as the more minute members of the class Turbellaria; belonging to this class, as a worm.
  • noun A member of the class Turbellaria.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) One of the Turbellaria. Also used adjectively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biology Any flatworm of the class Turbellaria
  • adjective Characteristic of these creatures

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From New Latin Turbellāria, class name, from Latin turbella, bustle, diminutive of turba, turmoil (from the motion of their cilia in the water); see turbid.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin turbellaria (from Latin turbellae ("bustle"), from turba ("confusion")) +‎ -an

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Examples

  • My favorites, however, are the free-living turbellarian worms, of which there are more than 4,000 species: that's about as numerous as all the mammal species put together.

    The Angry Evolutionist 2009

  • Prey is immobilized by special structures called rhabdoids which enable the turbellarian to swallow the prey whole, in pieces or suck the body fluids out of it.

    Platyhelminthes 2007

  • These are distributed over the body of the turbellarian, and collect waste and feed it into ducts which eventually lead to the exterior through pores.

    Platyhelminthes 2007

  • A simple turbellarian (Rhabdocoelum). m mouth, sd gullet epithelium, sm gullet muscles, d gastric gut, nc renal canals, nm renal aperture, au eye, na olfactory pit.

    The Evolution of Man — Volume 2 Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel 1876

  • My favourites, however, are the free-living turbellarian worms, of which there are more than four thousand species: that’s about as numerous as all the mammal species put together.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • My favourites, however, are the free-living turbellarian worms, of which there are more than four thousand species: that’s about as numerous as all the mammal species put together.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

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