sea cucumber

American  

noun

1. any echinoderm of the class Holothuroidea, having a long, leathery body with tentacles around the anterior end.

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sea cucumber British  

noun

1. any echinoderm of the class Holothuroidea, having an elongated body covered with a leathery skin and bearing a cluster of tentacles at the oral end. They usually creep on the sea bed or burrow in sand

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sea cucumber Scientific  

1. See holothurian

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Etymology

Origin of sea cucumber

First recorded in 1595–1605

Example Sentences

"Just yesterday we found a kind of type of swimming sea cucumber, and we still don't know what it is," he added, calling the diversity he's seen "really, really astonishing".

From BBC • Mar. 7, 2026

There's a bone-white lobster, suctioned up for examination at the surface, and a horned sea cucumber whose mast-like spikes collapse into black spaghetti when it arrives on the ship.

From Barron's • Jan. 26, 2026

At Wing, he serves sea cucumber inside a crispy spring roll, dramatically sliced tableside with a Chinese cleaver.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 18, 2025

From 2015 to 2020, the Sri Lankan Navy and the Indian Coast Guard made over 500 arrests associated with $2.84 million in sea cucumber thefts.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 1, 2023

I had thought it was a sea cucumber, but a gun made a lot more sense—why would the cowboy be pointing a sea cucumber at people as they entered the park?

From "Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus" by Dusti Bowling