polly fish

8.4

A brightly colored tropical fish with a mouth like a bird's beak that scrapes algae from coral

noun

: pez loro

A polly fish uses its beak-like mouth to scrape algae from coral.

Examples

The coral reef was full of vibrant polly fish darting among the rocks.
Have you ever seen a polly fish in an aquarium?
Children loved watching the colorful polly fishes at the aquarium.
The polly fish is known for its vibrant colors.
A polly fish uses its beak-like mouth to scrape algae from coral.
Children loved watching the colorful polly fish at the aquarium.
The coral reef was full of vibrant polly fish darting among the rocks.

Synonyms

parrotfish

vspolly fish

1 7.5

A brightly colored tropical fish with a beak-like mouth that lives on coral reefs

is the same species but stresses the ordinary name not habitat

pollyfish

vspolly fish

9.8

A brightly colored tropical fish with a beak like a parrot

is the same species but uses the common descriptive label

Surface Forms

polly fish singular

polly fish plural

Morphology

polly + fish

The second element 'fish' is transparent but the first element 'polly' is undocumented and ambiguous (commonly a proper name or informal reference to a parrot), so a learner who only knows the literal constituents would not reliably infer 'parrotfish' or the specific beak-like morphology. Because the compound’s specialized zoological meaning cannot be derived from the literal parts without extra lexical/cultural knowledge, it is opaque to a B1 learner.

Etymology

The name polly fish comes from the parrot bird polly because the fish has a beak-like mouth and bright, parrot-like colors. So, polly fish means a colorful tropical fish with a hard, beak-shaped mouth that scrapes algae from coral.