nautilus
Americannoun
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nautiluses,
plural
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nautili
plural
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Also called chambered nautilus, pearly nautilus. any cephalopod of the genus Nautilus, having a spiral, chambered shell with pearly septa.
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(initial capital letter) the first nuclear-powered submarine launched by the U.S. Navy.
noun
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any cephalopod mollusc of the genus Nautilus, esp the pearly nautilus
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short for paper nautilus
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of nautilus
1595–1605; < Latin < Greek nautílos paper nautilus, literally, sailor, derivative of naûs ship; the webbed dorsal arms of the paper nautilus were thought to have been used as sails
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Agnoli, who worked as a carpenter prior to entering architecture, used long spans of wood to create massive trusses and spiraling nautilus shapesand formed brick into catenary arches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2025
The results suggest nautilus shells, orderly yet beguilingly sinuous.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 24, 2023
In other words, the Fibonacci spiral evidence in a nautilus shell or a head of Romanesco broccoli is a byproduct of nature being efficient in its genetic code.
From Salon ● Mar. 20, 2022
His headpiece — “pale fuiono” — was adorned with rare silver nautilus shells.
From New York Times ● Feb. 10, 2022
James had a nautilus disposition, burrowing into his private appetites, but Terrance inflicted every fleeting and deep-seated fancy on all in his power.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
The varieties of the nautili have the same property of floating on the surface of the water, but they seldom are found many miles from land.
From The King's Own by Frederick Marryat
After the late gale, the water is covered with purple nautili, or as the sailors call them, Portuguese men-of-war.
From The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume I (of 2) by Florence A. Thomas Marshall
In the fossiliferous rocks below the tertiary, we find immense numbers of nautili, ammonites, and other kindred genera of polythalamous shells, called cephalopods, which were all carnivorous.
From The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Edward Hitchcock
The ammonites differ from the nautili in having the tube connecting the chambers placed on the outer margin of the coiled shell, while the calcareous neck where it passes through the partitions is directed forwards.
From The New Gresham Encyclopedia. Vol. 1 Part 2 Amiel to Atrauli by Various
First, however, we pulled out some way, and laid down our fish-pots at a spot where Ali seemed to think it was possible we might capture one of the much-wished-for nautili.
From In the Eastern Seas by William Henry Giles Kingston
The concrete nautiluses where we temporarily abandon our Kias and Porsches and mopeds produce, reproduce and shelter dualities.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2022
Metalsmiths set nautiluses on gold pedestals sculpted with mermaid and sea foam motifs.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2021
But when Birger Schmitz, a geologist at Lund University in Sweden, went hunting for rock dating back 466 million years, he wasn’t hoping to find fossilized nautiluses; he was looking for fossilized meteorites.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 19, 2019
In oceanic terms, squids, cuttlefish, nautiluses, and octopuses are mass-produced.
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 2018
Still, for my part, I should have preferred fair weather, bright skies, and plenty of nautiluses and flying-fish.
From A Jolly Fellowship by Frank Richard Stockton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
