sea butterfly

noun

any member of the gastropod order Pteropoda, shelled marine mollusks so called for their ability to swim using winglike extensions of the foot.

Origin of sea butterfly

First recorded in 1880–85

Words Nearby sea butterfly

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use sea butterfly in a sentence

You can go to the Southern Ocean today and pick up a little shelled sea butterfly in your hand and you can see that the shell is dissolving—there’s actually etching on the aragonite that forms the shell.
The Greening of Antarctica - Issue 90: Something Green | Marissa Grunes | October 7, 2020 | Nautilus

British Dictionary definitions for sea butterfly

sea butterfly

noun

another name for pteropod

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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