sea spider
- noun
- /siː ˈspaɪdər/
- Specialized
:
araña de mar
- Ninety percent of the amphipods and sea spiders, 77 percent
Examples
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The small sea spider scuttled across the ocean floor, using its long legs to navigate through the seaweed.
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PHOTO: Even though sea spiders are mostly legs surrounding a diminutive body, they are slow-moving and awkward.
Academic text (1992) -
Another giant, an eight-legged sea spider in the class Pycnogonida, was standing on its pointed legs in the ooze at the base of the promontory.
Academic text (1992) -
The newer research showed that molting juvenile sea spiders can regrow lost butts and lost legs, too, though they don't always seem to regrow the lost parts quite perfectly.
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During our dive, we spotted a sea spider resting on a rock, its slender body nearly blending into the surrounding environment.
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A sea spider can often be found among coral reefs, where its unique shape allows it to hide from predators.
Synonyms
A small sea animal like a spider with long legs that lives in the ocean
A small sea animal like a spider with long thin legs
A group of sea animals called sea spiders with long legs and small bodies
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly composed of 'sea' (marine) + 'spider' (spider-like creature), so its meaning as a spider-like animal that lives in the sea is immediately inferable from the constituents. This straightforward noun-compounding pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
Sea spider gets its name from the way it looks: a very small body with long, thin legs like a spider living in the sea. So the name means 'a sea creature that looks like a spider'.
