octopus
Americannoun
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octopuses,
plural
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octopi
plural
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any octopod of the genus Octopus, having a soft, oval body and eight sucker-bearing arms, living mostly at the bottom of the sea.
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something likened to an octopus, as an organization with many forms of far-reaching influence or control.
noun
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any cephalopod mollusc of the genera Octopus, Eledone, etc, having a soft oval body with eight long suckered tentacles and occurring at the sea bottom: order Octopoda (octopods)
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a powerful influential organization with far-reaching effects, esp harmful ones
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another name for spider
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of octopus
1750–60; < New Latin < Greek oktṓpous (plural oktṓpodes ) eight-footed; see octo-, -pod
Explanation
An octopus is an eight-legged sea creature. Octopuses are intelligent animals, and have been shown to have great capacity for learning. (However, that doesn't stop people from grilling and eating them.) An octopus is a mollusk, which means it's a distant relation of slugs, snails, clams, and mussels. It's also a cephalopod, an animal with a large head and tentacles or arms. Of the other animals in these categories, octopuses are by far the smartest, and they're also incredibly flexible because of their lack of a skeleton or hard shell, which makes them able to squeeze through tiny spaces. The Greek root, oktopous, means "eight-foot."
Vocabulary lists containing octopus
Marine Biology - Introductory
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Marine Biology - Middle School
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Marine Biology - High School
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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:
Phishing scams are like an octopus: They have many sticky tentacles.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
Increasing numbers of octopus may offer a new market for fishermen, for example, but can hit populations of crabs, lobster, scallops and other shellfish on which they prey.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
Cool-adapted species such as cod are generally moving further north, while numbers of some warm-water species such as octopus have risen around south-west England.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
For the experiment, each octopus was placed inside a start box that was open at the front and top.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
I cross my arms and in my head I tally up all the many points that belong in the octopus column.
From "The Benefits of Being an Octopus" by Ann Braden
That outer shell is built largely from chitin, a tough natural material also found in fungal cell walls, fish scales, and the beaks of squids and octopi.
From Science Daily ● May 9, 2026
Jewish people were sometimes depicted as octopi in Nazi posters during World War Two.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2024
“Some people were turned off by the violence or the octopi scene and felt ‘Oldboy’ was too much of a genre film for competition,” he says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2023
As another example, the team, in partnership with the Department of Natural Resources is experimenting with octopots — small ceramic pot homes that may attract octopi, the kelp crab’s natural predator.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 8, 2023
In the jar the little octopi were huddled up, each keeping as far as possible from the others.
From "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck
Perhaps the most impressive discoveries are animal “cities,” including two assemblies of octopuses, dubbed Octopolis and Octlantis, found off the east coast of Australia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
Instead of attacking the reflected image, the octopuses needed to figure out where the stimulus was actually located and move toward it.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
A new study published in Current Biology found that octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate food hidden from direct view, demonstrating sophisticated spatial thinking.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
Even so, the study adds another remarkable skill to the growing list of abilities that make octopuses some of the most fascinating animals in the ocean.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
The original plural was octopodes, Anglicized over the years to octopuses.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
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.
