mollusk

or mol·lusc

[ mol-uhsk ]
See synonyms for mollusk on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. any invertebrate of the phylum Mollusca, typically having a calcareous shell of one, two, or more pieces that wholly or partly enclose the soft, unsegmented body, including the chitons, snails, bivalves, squids, and octopuses.

Origin of mollusk

1
1775–85; <French mollusque<New Latin Mollusca;see Mollusca

Other words from mollusk

  • mol·lus·kan, mol·lus·can [muh-luhs-kuhn], /məˈlʌs kən/, adjective, noun
  • mol·lusk·like, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use mollusk in a sentence

  • Her instructions for “the perfect scallops” include “Season both sides and let those little marine bivalve mollusks chillax.”

  • I will take her any day over the “educated class,” the bureaucratic mollusks and the defeatist sad sacks in Washington.

    In Defense of Tea Parties | Tunku Varadarajan | January 11, 2010 | THE DAILY BEAST
  • The land mollusks and the great order of insects and other land arthropods only to a minor extent dwell in the open light.

    Man And His Ancestor | Charles Morris
  • Misfortune, Fatality, had willed that a drop of water thicker than the surrounding medium should pass through one of the mollusks.

    Urania | Camille Flammarion
  • Other fishes are bottom feeders, as the blackfish and the sea bass, living almost entirely upon mollusks and crustaceans.

    A Civic Biology | George William Hunter
  • Hermaphrodite mollusks, with a marvellously complicated sexual apparatus, ought also to be studied separately.

  • These shells were once the homes of sea mollusks, as such soft, fleshy creatures are called.

    Stories of California | Ella M. Sexton

Scientific definitions for mollusk

mollusk

  1. Any of numerous invertebrate animals of the phylum Mollusca, usually living in water and often having a hard outer shell. They have a muscular foot, a well-developed circulatory and nervous system, and often complex eyes. Mollusks include gastropods (snails and shellfish), slugs, octopuses, squids, and the extinct ammonites. Mollusks appear in the fossil record in the early Cambrian Period, but it is not known from what group they evolved.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.