Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various invertebrate animals of the phylum Cnidaria, characterized by a radially symmetrical body with a saclike internal cavity and stinging nematocysts, and including the jellyfishes, hydras, sea anemones, and corals.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun any of various invertebrate animals, such as jellyfish, hydras, sea anemones, corals and formerly sponges and ctenophores that belong to the phylum Cnidaria.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun radially symmetrical animals having saclike bodies with only one opening and tentacles with stinging structures; they occur in polyp and medusa forms

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Cnīdāria, phylum name, from Greek knīdē, sea nettle.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin cnidaria +‎ -an

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word cnidarian.

Examples

  • A first striking finding was the high number of SOX gene sequences recovered from both the cnidarian and the ctenophore representatives (10 and 13 from C. hemisphaerica and P. pileus, respectively).

    As Expected 2008

  • Based on the clear clustering of the Wnt gene families it is highly unlikely that a single Wnt gene independently expanded in the cnidarian and vertebrate lineages.

    Death of a popular anti-ID argument 2007

  • Based on the clear clustering of the Wnt gene families it is highly unlikely that a single Wnt gene independently expanded in the cnidarian and vertebrate lineages.

    Death of a popular anti-ID argument 2007

  • The ancestral cnidarian proto-Hox cluster is thought to have contained four Hox genes.

    Jonathan Wells gets everything wrong, again - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • "Because all three main clades of bilaterian animals express a let-7 RNA that is temporally regulated, but cnidarian, poriferan and all non-animal species that we analysed do not express a detectable let-7 RNA, we propose that the gene evolved after the divergence of diploblastic and bilaterian animals"

    Teach the Controversy James F. McGrath 2008

  • Cnidarians are radially symmetrical, meaning that they're symmetrical around several axes, like the spokes in a bicycle wheel, whereas all the organisms depicted to the right of the cnidarian are bilaterally symmetrical, meaning they're only symmetrical around the head-to-tail axis (except for the echinoderms, which evolved radial symmetry independently).

    2005 June - Telic Thoughts 2005

  • I'm going to briefly summarize an interesting new article on cnidarian Hox genes…unfortunately, it requires a bit of background to put it in context, so bear with me for a moment.

    Jellyfish lack true Hox genes! - The Panda's Thumb 2006

  • I'm going to briefly summarize an interesting new article on cnidarian Hox genes…unfortunately, it requires a bit of background to put it in context, so bear with me for a moment.

    The Panda's Thumb: May 2006 Archives 2006

  • Namapoikia rietoogensis gen. et sp. nov. is up to 1 meter in diameter and bears a complex and robust biomineralized skeleton; it probably represents a cnidarian or poriferan.

    The Cambrian as an evolutionary exemplar - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • A kind of colonial cnidarian - an animal with stinging cells related to anemones, corals and jellyfish.

    NYT > Home Page 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.