A cnidarian in its free-swimming stage. Medusas are bell-shaped, with tentacles hanging down around a central mouth. Jellyfish are medusas, while corals and sea anemones lack a medusa stage and exist only as polyps.
Compare polyp
1750–60; special use of Medusa, alluding to the Gorgon's snaky locks
< Latin < Greek Médousa, special use of médousa, feminine of médōn ruling
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A jellyfish begins its life cycle as an anemone-like creature on the sea floor before undergoing a metamorphosis and sprouting into a recognizable medusa — that Pacman ghost shape we're all familiar with.
From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2023
Scientists prefer the term jelly or medusa over jellyfish because the creatures are not fish.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2022
A black floor-length gown with undulating straps could have been a poisonous medusa, with coral-red dye bleeding down its multi-layered skirt.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 20, 2020
She conjures a lineage of threatening archetypes: the harpy and her talons, the witch and her spells, the medusa and her writhing locks.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2018
Then they have taken the form of a medusa.
From "The Thing About Jellyfish" by Ali Benjamin
When the monster emerges in the water tower, a moss-covered, faucet-dripping, steam-seeping laboratory punctuated by a screaming sculpture of Medusa, he’s as old as he is new.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2025
Did you watch “Kaos,” the short-lived Netflix series from Charlie Covell that starred Jeff Goldblum as Zeus and Debi Mazar as Medusa?
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2025
Looking at Medusa, the hideous woman with snakes for hair, might turn the viewer to stone, but there’s power in offending the eye—or at least rejecting the pressure to be decorative.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2024
Brittany Ferries' Mont St Michel was accompanied by a flotilla of vintage and serving warships, including World War Two-era motor gunboat 81, motor launch HMS Medusa and RAF rescue boat HSL 102.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2024
“I’m holding it in my lap. Gericault's Raft of the Medusa by Lorenz E. A. Eitner. It’s a beautiful book, Ari.”
From "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Wearing a toadstool headdress and a skirt embellished with Medusas, El Beh has one of the most striking looks — though the orange ram’s horns on Trebien Pollard are quite something, too.
From New York Times ● Jan. 23, 2022
Medusas are the successors of Bruitparif’s first-generation sensors, called Sonopodes, which rely on expensive components imported from Japan.
From The New Yorker ● May 6, 2019
The band's final two songs are I Am The King and Medusas "which sounds like it's a Greek myth but is actually about jelly fish".
From BBC ● Feb. 28, 2019
He wielded his clinical obligation like Perseus’s shield, in which a cavalcade of Medusas lost their stony power.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 4, 2015
I followed the hissing and spitting sounds of Medusas hair.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
“I was able to actually collect some of those medusae last year during the bloom, but rearing gelatinous organisms is pretty difficult,” Stajner said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2024
Although beached by-the-wind sailors die in great numbers, they most probably have already reproduced and left thousands of medusae in the sea, according to Wagner.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2024
Before they adhere to the ocean’s surface, they live underwater as tiny creatures known as medusae, Wagner said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2024
Shrimps, small fish, lobsters, various mollusks, and medusae form his diet.
From The Swiss Family Robinson or, Adventures on a Desert Island by Wyss, Jean Rudolph
Sea-nettles, or medusae, are well known to constitute the principal food of that species of whale which is termed the right whale.
From The Ocean and its Wonders by Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael)
The blue seafaring colonies are themselves asexual, though they bud off tiny transparent medusas that are thought to go to the deep sea and reproduce sexually there, Stajner said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2024
Vivid hues that evoked the sea beds and headwear that resembled medusas continued the theme.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 1, 2022
But not all marine lakes have medusas, the bell-shape organisms you probably think of when the word "jellyfish" comes to mind.
From National Geographic ● Feb. 28, 2018
The ephyra grow into medusas, the mature forms of the jellyfish.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
In the midst of these medusas M. Bonpland observed bundles of Dagysa notata, a mollusc of a singular construction, which Sir Joseph Banks first discovered.
From Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 1 by Ross, Thomasina
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.
