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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Its bronze door bears a Medusa head, her open mouth turned into a letter slot.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 30, 2026
Only much later would I realize that it wasn’t so much a smorgasbord of vendors as it was the Gorgon Medusa: When one head is removed, more sprout in its place.
From Slate • Jan. 13, 2026
Syn proudly sent me a link to a US public warning about Medusa which was put out in March.
From BBC • Sep. 29, 2025
The Medusa, a restaurant and music venue, is in Playa de Palma, near Palma, the capital and largest city of the island chain.
From New York Times • May 23, 2024
It was hair that could turn the Medusa to stone, hair snakier than all the snake pits in a minotaur movie.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
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.
