First recorded in 1605–15; origin uncertain
First recorded in 1965–70
A squid is a sea creature that's similar to an octopus but has ten arms instead of eight—including two extra tentacles they use for grabbing their prey. The largest squid ever found was nearly 60 feet long! Like their octopus relatives, squid are cephalopods, or mollusks with prominent heads and many arms. Squid can swim extremely fast by sucking in water and propelling it out (just like jet propulsion), and their skin can change color so they blend in with their surroundings. Squid squirt a kind of dark ink to confuse predators; some language experts believe that squid was once sailors' slang for squirt.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Blue sharks can reach more than three metres in length and feed in open water on fish, squid, smaller sharks and sea birds.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
And at the end of a shift, he and his dysfunctional workplace family gather to share bowls of squid stew and taste the results of their work.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
This evidence suggests that vertebrate eyes arose through this specific sequence of changes rather than evolving from the same structures that produced the eyes of insects, squid, and other animals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
The imagery in “Minions & Monsters” can be ingenious, like the galumphing tentacles on an oversize squid or the close-up shot that goes inside a director’s megaphone to see his tongue waggling at the screen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
“It’s like a squid in love with the sky.”
From "Feed" by M.T. Anderson
At its core lies a sensitive magnetometer, known as a SQUID.
From Economist ● Jan. 11, 2018
That would create a magnetic field large enough to spot with a SQUID.
From Economist ● Jan. 26, 2017
What is used is a sensor called a SQUID, for superconducting quantum interference device.
From Textbooks ● Aug. 12, 2015
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
The squids lose their transparent bodies as they get older, and dying adults have been recorded before by fishermen, but a colossal squid hadn’t before been seen alive at such a depth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2025
The Natural History Museum has suggested it is hard to estimate the global population of colossal squids.
From BBC ● Apr. 16, 2025
It’s possible the creatures were giant squids, or pinnipeds, like seals or sea lions.
From National Geographic ● Dec. 28, 2023
He loved all of it: smoke rings and lonely squids and giant donuts and Flora Belle Buckman’s round head and all the wonderful thoughts inside of it.
From "Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures" by Kate DiCamillo
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.
