mollusks

Cultural  

1. A phylum of invertebrates with soft bodies and muscular feet. Some mollusks also have hard shells. Oysters, clams, snails, slugs, octopuses, and squid are mollusks.

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Example Sentences

Mollusks such as snails and mussels, along with vertebrates, were the most affected, while plants and arthropods faced relatively few losses.

From Science Daily • Oct. 27, 2025

Mollusks and other near-shore sedentary creatures in the bay were wiped out en masse, Minicheva says.

From Science Magazine • Jan. 3, 2024

Mollusks use biomineralization, that is, chemicals and minerals in the surrounding environment, to build their shells.

From Salon • Aug. 8, 2021

Mollusks, ranging from clams to squids and octopuses, use hemocyanin, too, but they seem to have invented their version of it independently.

From Scientific American • May 6, 2019

By Massive, Baer indicated those animals in which the structure is soft and concentrated, without a very distinct individualization of parts,—exactly the animals included by Cuvier under his name of Mollusks, or soft-bodied animals.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 by Various