sea lettuce
- noun
- /siː ˈlɛtɪs/
:
lechuga de mar
- The chef prepared a delicious dish using sea lettuce and seafood.
Examples
-
In Scotland, people often add sea lettuce to their salads for extra flavor.
-
Sea lettuce, Ulva lactuca, grew along nearly the entire shoreline of the bay in the 1980s, but its abundance was much lower than it once was, also because the bay was turbid.
Academic text (1990) -
Studies of eelgrass and sea lettuce are also needed.
Academic text (1990) -
Eelgrass and sea lettuce
Academic text (1990) -
If a vacant space on top of a crab's shell receives enough sunlight through the shallow water, then green sea lettuce, brown popweed, and red rockweed often move in.
Academic text (2002) -
You can find sea lettuce growing in many shallow coastal waters.
Synonyms
41
1.0
A plant that grows in the sea, often in long green or brown sheets
1
9.9
Seaweed and other water plants washed up on the shore
A thin flat green seaweed like lettuce that grows in the sea
Dead seaweed and other sea plants washed up on the shore
How Edible
1
4.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun combines 'sea' + 'lettuce' in a directly compositional way to denote a leafy marine plant; a B1 learner who knows both words can reasonably infer it is a lettuce-like edible seaweed. This follows regular noun-noun compounding and common cross-linguistic patterns for naming marine plants, so the meaning is transparent.
Etymology
Sea lettuce is named for the simple image of lettuce growing in the sea: this thin, green seaweed has wrinkled, leaf-like pieces that really look like salad lettuce. That's why the name means the 'edible green seaweed' people gather and eat.