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
Long periods of sea heat can trigger mass die-offs among some seagrasses, shellfish and other species, as well as encouraging greater numbers of warm-water creatures including octopus.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
Such was the lack of food, another crewmate told the court that they had resorted to eating fish and octopus and fish caught by the dredges to survive.
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
Normally, identifying a new octopus species requires scientists to dissect the specimen and closely study features such as the mouth, beak, and teeth.
From Science Daily ● May 25, 2026
I go back and forth about whether it’s a good thing that a baby octopus starts out life the size of a pencil eraser, because the eraser on my pencil is pretty darn small.
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
Red Wings faithful throw live and dead octopi on the ice to salute three-goal games, and Nashville Predators fans toss catfish.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 5, 2021
The little octopi live among the boulders imbedded in sand.
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
For the tiny blue octopus, the scans provided clear views of internal organs and mouth structures, allowing scientists to officially classify it as a new species and better understand its relationship to other octopuses.
From Science Daily ● May 25, 2026
"These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them. I just feel lucky that I got to work with them," says Voight.
From Science Daily ● May 25, 2026
Tracing the origins of octopuses has long been difficult because their soft bodies rarely fossilize.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 25, 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.
