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:
OK, I’m casting my mind back to that Pirates of the Caribbean sequel where Bill Nighy had an octopus for a face.
From Slate ● Oct. 2, 2026
The actor thanked producers and writers of the project, as well as the technicians who brought her co-star — an octopus named Marcellus — to life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
The food alone made the day’s mileage seem like a bargain: octopus in Galicia, Arzúa-Ulloa cheese from a farmers market or milk-fed lamb that made me forgive every hill in Castilla y León.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
A human, an octopus, and a coral may appear to have almost nothing in common, but their chromosomes still contain recognizable fragments inherited from an animal ancestor that lived more than 600 million years ago.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026
Limber wrapped a strong arm around Roz’s wrist, and then the octopus jetted off through the water, dragging the robot behind her.
From "The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown
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
Along the way, someone substituted the Latin ending pi for the Greek podes and came up with the polyglot octopi.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
The women are nevertheless linked—by their resilience, their unhappy dealings with Andreas and, intriguingly, their shared fascination with octopuses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
It’s not clear when the trafficked animals might join the roughly 12,000 turtles, frogs, octopuses, penguins, sharks and other sea creatures currently on public display.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
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
Although the octopuses did not always choose the shortest path, they became faster at reaching the correct location as the trials progressed.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
Though it’s etymologically illegitimate, octopi is now so common that dictionaries list it as a second choice after 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.
