Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏛️ Greek hospitality 🪸 A soft coral 🌽 Pollen influence
xenia

xenia

1 9.9
Soft coral with feathery polyps that often pulse in shallow reefs
  • noun
  • /ˈzɛnɪə/
  • Specialized
: xenia
  • In the aquarium, the xenia coral dazzled visitors with its pulsing movements and bright colors.

Examples

  • Recently on Facebook, some of my era friends were posting about how great their junior high and high school years were in Xenia.

    Blog text (24)

  • The diver observed a beautiful colony of xenia soft coral swaying gently with the current.

  • Those are needlefish, she thought, and that is Xenia soft coral.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • While snorkeling, I encountered a patch of xenia coral, its feathery polyps rhythmically extending and retracting.

Surface Forms

xenia singular
xenias plural

Etymology

Xenia for the soft coral genus comes from the Greek root xenos, which means 'guest' or 'stranger'. The coral's feathery, pulsing polyps look like many small guests waving in the water, so the name helps you remember this welcoming-looking reef animal.