cor·al   (kôr'əl, kŏr'-)    n.   A rocklike deposit consisting of the calcareous skeletons secreted by various anthozoans. Coral deposits often accumulate to form reefs or islands in warm seas. Any of numerous chiefly colonial marine polyps of the class Anthozoa that secrete such calcareous skeletons. The red-orange, pinkish, or white deposits secreted by corals of the genus Corallium, used to make jewelry and ornaments. An object made of this material. A deep or strong pink to moderate red or reddish orange. The unfertilized eggs of a female lobster, which turn a reddish color when cooked. adj.  Of a deep or strong pink to moderate red or reddish orange. [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin corallium, from Greek korallion.]

Coral

Cor"al\, n. [Of. coral, F, corail, L. corallum, coralium, fr. Gr. kora`llion.]

1. (Zo["o]l.) The hard parts or skeleton of various Anthozoa, and of a few Hydrozoa. Similar structures are also formed by some Bryozoa.

Note: The large stony corals forming coral reefs belong to various genera of Madreporaria, and to the hydroid genus, Millepora. The red coral, used in jewelry, is the stony axis of the stem of a gorgonian (Corallium rubrum) found chiefly in the Mediterranean. The fan corals, plume corals, and sea feathers are species of Gorgoniacea, in which the axis is horny. Organ-pipe coral is formed by the genus Tubipora, an Alcyonarian, and black coral is in part the axis of species of the genus Antipathes. See Anthozoa, Madrepora.

2. The ovaries of a cooked lobster; -- so called from their color.

3. A piece of coral, usually fitted with small bells and other appurtenances, used by children as a plaything.

Brain coral, or Brain stone coral. See under Brain.

Chain coral. See under Chain.

Coral animal (Zo["o]l.), one of the polyps by which corals are formed. They are often very erroneously called coral insects.

Coral fish. See in the Vocabulary.

Coral reefs (Phys. Geog.), reefs, often of great extent, made up chiefly of fragments of corals, coral sands, and the solid limestone resulting from their consolidation. They are classed as fringing reefs, when they border the land; barrier reefs, when separated from the shore by a broad belt of water; atolls, when they constitute separate islands, usually inclosing a lagoon. See Atoll.

Coral root (Bot.), a genus (Corallorhiza) of orchideous plants, of a yellowish or brownish red color, parasitic on roots of other plants, and having curious jointed or knotted roots not unlike some kinds of coral. See Illust. under Coralloid.

Coral snake. (Zo) (a) A small, venomous, Brazilian snake (Elaps corallinus), coral-red, with black bands. (b) A small, harmless, South American snake (Tortrix scytale).

Coral tree (Bot.), a tropical, leguminous plant, of several species, with showy, scarlet blossoms and coral-red seeds. The best known is Erythrina Corallodendron.

Coral wood, a hard, red cabinet wood. --McElrath.

coral 

coral   (kôr'əl)  Pronunciation Key  Any of numerous small, sedentary cnidarians (coelenterates) of the class Anthozoa. Corals often form massive colonies in shallow sea water and secrete a cup-shaped skeleton of calcium carbonate, which they can retreat into when in danger. Corals are related to the sea anemones and have stinging tentacles around the mouth opening that are used to catch prey. A hard, stony substance consisting of the skeletons of these animals. It is typically white, pink, or reddish and can form large reefs that support an abundance of ocean fish.

CORAL
1. Class Oriented Ring Associated Language.
2. A deductive database and logic programming system based on Horn-clause rules with extensions like SQL's group-by and aggregation operators. CORAL was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is implemented in C++ and has a Prolog-like syntax.
Many evaluation techniques are supported, including bottom-up fixpoint evaluation and top-down backtracking. Modules are separately compiled; different evaluation methods can be used in different modules within a single program. Disk-resident data is supported via an interface to the Exodus storage manager. There is an on-line help facility. It requires AT&T C++ 2.0 (or G++ soon) and runs on Decstation and Sun-4.
(ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/).
(1993-01-29)

Coral

Heb. ramoth, meaning "heights;" i.e., "high-priced" or valuable things, or, as some suppose, "that which grows high," like a tree (Job 28:18; Ezek. 27:16), according to the Rabbins, red coral, which was in use for ornaments. The coral is a cretaceous marine product, the deposit by minute polypous animals of calcareous matter in cells in which the animal lives. It is of numberless shapes as it grows, but usually is branched like a tree. Great coral reefs and coral islands abound in the Red Sea, whence probably the Hebrews derived their knowledge of it. It is found of different colours, white, black, and red. The red, being esteemed the most precious, was used, as noticed above, for ornamental purposes.