Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The collection of organisms living on or in sea or lake bottoms.
- n. The bottom of a sea or lake.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The plants and animals that live in the sea-bottom, and those that are attached to its surface, and those that creep or run over it: a collective noun introduced by Haeckel. The benthos is contrasted with the plankton, or floating and swimming fauna and flora of the sea. It includes all the marine macrophytic algæ, also some phanerogams, the sea-grasses (see sea-grass, 1), as well as an abundance of microphytic algæ (diatoms, etc.). It is divided into the sedentary and the vagile or vagrant benthos, the former including organisms attached to the bottom, the latter those moving over it. See plankton, nekton.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot. & Zoöl.) The bottom of the sea, esp. of the deep oceans the fauna and flora of the sea bottom; -- opposed to
plankton .
WordNet 3.0
- n. organisms (plants and animals) that live at or near the bottom of a sea
- n. a region including the bottom of the sea and the littoral zones
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek βένθος (benthos, "the depths"). (Wiktionary)
- Greek. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Professor Joye and her colleagues used the Alvin submersible to explore the bottom-most layer of the water around the well head, known as the benthos.”
“New word: if you're one of those creatures that abides in the lowest level of a body of water (benthic zone), you are called a 'benthos'.”
“GQ is more "resilient" than other reefs due to it's protection, isolation, abundant predators, etc False Since the state of benthos in terms of coral and seaweed cover is far from exceptional, this argument isn't justified.”
The Huffington Post: John F. Bruno: Fact Checking the 60 Minutes Segment on Gardens of the Queen
“Despite some inaccuracies about the state of the benthos that I'll outline below, I thought the60 Minutespiecewas great for reef conservation in general.”
The Huffington Post: John F. Bruno: Fact Checking the 60 Minutes Segment on Gardens of the Queen
“ÂDespite some inaccuracies about the state of the benthos that I'll outline below, I thought theÂ60 MinutesÂpieceÂwas great for reef conservation in general.”
The Huffington Post: John F. Bruno: Fact Checking the 60 Minutes Segment on Gardens of the Queen
“GQ is more "resilient" than other reefs due to it's protection, isolation, abundant predators, etc ÂFalse ÂSince the state of benthos in terms of coral and seaweed cover is far from exceptional, this argument isn't justified.”
The Huffington Post: John F. Bruno: Fact Checking the 60 Minutes Segment on Gardens of the Queen
“Greenland halibut is commercially important in the North Atlantic and the Pacific, and is an important food item for deep-feeding marine mammals (e.g., narwhal and hooded seals) and sharks feeding on benthos such as the Greenland shark (Somniosus macrocephalus).”
“In the northern Bering and southern Chukchi Seas, primary production occurs over a shallow shelf (50 to 200 m) and as the zooplankton and bacterioplankton cannot fully deplete this carbon source, it is either transferred to the benthos or advected downstream [17].”
“An early bloom in cold melt water means most of the primary production goes to the benthos.”
“The change was predominantly from benthos to plankton and affected the overall diatom richness.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘benthos’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - b
List of words from phrontistery.info
bywoner, byssus, byssiferous, byssaceous, byrnie, butyric, butyraceous, buttery, buteonine, bunting, burdet, broma and 582 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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I didn't know there was a word for that!
interdigitate, aspheric, benthos, reptation, pastiche, pandiculate, agelast, obdormition, dysania, armscye, phosphene, etiolation and 62 more...
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Naturals
dogtooth violet, adder's-tongue, ribbon fern, breadberry, echinate, stamen, aeolian, boreas, chinook, Eurus, firmament, edentata and 35 more...
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Sci-tech
cicatrix, senescence, varicose, gestalt, glossolalia, synesthesia, hypolactasia, hemoglobin, ametabolic, eutrophic, eutrophication, cryptid and 35 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
anacoluthon, defenestration, hypnopomp, hypnagogue, idioglossia, panopticon, tatterdemalion, abalone, caltrop, miasma, paroxysm, smalt and 475 more...
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Underwaterritory
When you're underwater, what do you see or experience? Let's dive...
(Here's a cute little related list called Fishful Thinking...)underwater, curglaff, submarine, underwater habitat, diving bell, paravane, bottom trawling, sediment traps, torpedo, mines, shipwreck, sonar and 214 more...
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Words
teeter, headlong, reprobate, canard, ersatz, prevaricate, trenchant, minatory, fatuous, stultify, vitiate, fulminate and 135 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
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There's a word for that?
temerity, tacit, froward, faineant, caterwaul, menagerie, ennui, sine qua non, lissom, multifarious, laconic, katzenjammer and 240 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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Encountered while reading
snatiation, urodynamics, cadaverine, putrescine, ferret emesis, dracula fish, psychedelic frogfish, mangkorn chomphoo, sengi, blonde-ginger bat, symplectic camel, zeolite and 312 more...
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What David Foster Wallace circled in ...
ablative, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, ailanthus, aleatory, alfresco, algolagnia and 474 more...
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What David Foster Wallace Circled in ...
http://www.slate.com/id/2250784/
ablative absolute, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, aleatory, ailanthus, alfresco, algolagnia and 482 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for benthos.
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