Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various squidlike cephalopod marine mollusks of the genus Sepia that have ten arms and a calcareous internal shell and eject a dark inky fluid when in danger.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A cephalopod; specifically, a cephalopod of the genus Sepia and family Sepiidæ; a dibranchiate cephalopodous mollusk, with a depressed body, inclosed in a sac. The shorter arms or feet, eight in number, covered with four rows of raised disks or suckers, are arranged around the mouth, and from the midst of them extend two long tentacles, also furnished with disks. These members the animal uses in walking, for attaching itself to objects, and for seizing its prey. A tube or funnel exists below the head and leads from the gills, through which the water admitted to these organs is expelled; and the creature, by ejecting the water with force, can dart backward with amazing velocity. In a sac on the back of the mantle there is a light, porous, calcareous shell formed of thin plates; this is the cuttlebone or sepiost, corresponding to the calamary or pen of the squids. (See
calamary .) The cuttlefish has the power of ejecting a black, ink-like fluid, the sepia of artists (seesepia ), from a bag or sac, so as to darken the water and conceal itself from pursuit. From this usage the term cuttlefish is extended not only to all the forms ofSepiidæ and related decapod cephalopods, but also to the octopod members of the same class. When the octopods are called cuttlefishes, the decapods are commonly distinguished as squids. The two figures illustrate the two principal types. See Decapoda, Octopoda, and Cephalopoda, and cuts under Dibranchiata, ink-bag, and Sepia.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of various squidlike cephalopod marine mollusks of the genus Sepia that have ten arms and a calcareous internal shell and eject a dark inky fluid when in danger.
WordNet 3.0
- n. ten-armed oval-bodied cephalopod with narrow fins as long as the body and a large calcareous internal shell
Etymologies
- From cuttle + fish. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English codel, cotil, cuttlefish (from Old English cudele) + fish. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They even have grilled cuttlefish, which is pretty good.”
“One of the most amazing aspects of the cuttlefish is their skin.”
“Every meal they served us banquet style was pristine, filled with the day's freshest catch, including plenty of squid (also known as cuttlefish in these parts), as they were in season.”
“Those people who have seen it think that it is a kind of cuttlefish, but that the arms, or tentacles, as they are called, have been broken away from it.”
“While called "cuttlefish," these animals are actually not fish at all-they are members of the class Cephalopoda, which also includes octopus, squid, and the chambered nautilus.”
“While birds and mammals share many neurological features, assessing conscious states in invertebrates, such as cuttlefish and octopuses, is more difficult.”
Latest Science News Features, Blog Entries, Column Entries, Issues, Articles and Book Reviews
“cuttlefish", along with the XKCD comic and a few other worthy targets.”
“Big on new techniques and technologies, there's plenty of cleverness in his dishes and a dash of madness, which he calls pequeñas locuras – little follies – such as oysters in "gin and tonic" and cuttlefish noodles tossed together in a deconstructed pesto.”
The Guardian: 10 of the best restaurants for new Catalan cuisine
“The “risotto” may be made from corn germ and foie gras fat, but the baby cuttlefish that sit atop it are still plain grilled cuttlefish.”
“You tick off a choice of antipasti from a paper-strip menu calamari salad, salami, burrata, marinated anchovies with a fennel, grapes and sun-dried lemons and nibble on focaccia dipped in Tuscan olive oil, while in the open-plan kitchen, chef Robbie Pepin dishes up homemade gnocchi with artichokes, cuttlefish and olives, asparagus risotto and veal sirloin, grilled lamb or roasted sea bass.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cuttlefish’.
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molluscs
very comprehensive list
of molluscs,who does not like
calamari? hmm yum
molluscigerous
100,000 species just in molluscsabalone, ammonite, argonaut, ataata, belon, bivalve, blackhead, bluepoint, brachiopod, buckie, byssal, byssus and 271 more...
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PECH - marine species
African cuttlefish, Alaska plaice, Alaska pollock, Alaska pollack, walleye pollock, alewife, gaspereau, river herring, sawbelly, allis shad, American angler, goosefish and 994 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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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Junk
walrus, fascination, broadway, fickle, downturn, bridge, gargle, rotunda, mesh, fab, shortlife, strumming and 304 more...
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Favorite Tangible Object Words
Trimming the "Chained Bear's Favorites" list so I don't crash people's computers... like my own...
castanets, whaup, budgie, wallabies, ring-wraith, hobbit, chinchilla, guano, merganser, phalarope, phalarope, curlew and 138 more...
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nighthawks at the diner
being words from Tom Waits songs.
vinyl, cigarette, rhinestone, naugahyde, margarine, vermouth, gin, platinum, wurlitzer, menthol, oldsmobile, asphalt and 90 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Hedgepiglet
Words for things both tangible and nonanthropic
rorqual, vellus, wrasse, rainbow bee-eater, tinkershire, lemonquat, boomslang, tufted vetch, cubeb, nipplefruit, madapple, wad and 447 more...
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favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 547 more...
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wordsmith III: revenge of wordie
sedimentary, igneous, segment, surfeit, unctuous, magma, garble, ransack, concubine, coincide, metamorphic, clastic and 208 more...
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Critters
cockle, cicada, appaloosa, brachiopod, bivalve, aye-aye, cygnet, alewife, chamois, ermine, drake, dugong and 381 more...
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Favorite Words
crunk, ostentatious, shellac, smoot, thrice, somnambulant, nefarious, nostalgic, shenanigans, hooligans, oracle, torr and 142 more...
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Snaily, clammy, squidy
The list is mainly a vehicle to give some quotations about mollusks, so check the comments.
oyster, snail, nacre, clam, paua, slug, limpet, shell, scallop, whelk, winkle, conchology and 26 more...
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of the sea
maritime, mariner, nautical, plankton, crustaceans, cephalopod, Poseidon, windsurfer, tide, galleon, barquentine, jettison and 1 more...
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animalia
Creatures with interesting names/lives.
salamander, badger, varmint, wombat, skink, tortoise, pika, gnu, pangolin, porpoise, serval, walrus and 53 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cuttlefish.

bilby Ha! Mango Starr! Nov 29, 2009
ruzuzu I found some Beatle juice boxes. Nov 29, 2009
madmouth unctious ochre Nov 27, 2009
PossibleUnderscore That should say dirtyish. I don't know what went wrong with my typing and I'm itching to fix it, but the edit button has disappeared. Nov 27, 2009
PossibleUnderscore Squishy yellow? No... more like vomity yellow run through with red.
(and the best Volkswagen Beetles are white(or at least a dirish white) with a blue and red stripe and the number 53) Nov 27, 2009
ruzuzu I think it might be a squishy yellow... unless we're talking about Volkswagen Beetles, in which case it's probably an oily brown. Nov 27, 2009
bilby Your research report on the colour of beetle juice remains overdue. Nov 27, 2009
ruzuzu As I was out looking at the stars tonight, I realized what color Betelgeuse is--it's red. Wikipedia tells me it's a red supergiant. Nov 27, 2009
pterodactyl *listens to pronunciation*
Oho, so that's how you differentiate "cuttlefish" from "cuddlefish" -- you aspirate the T's! Oooooh, sionnach, you sly fox! Nov 26, 2009
bilby *picks up a fox and belts it with his hurley 60 metres and over the crossbar for a nice 3-pointer*
Feral fox flogging is my hockey hobby.
Nov 25, 2009
sionnach And I always thought 'food lobby' was Strine for 'cafeteria'.
But maybe it's rhyming slang for 'hobby', e.g. "unicycle hockey is just my food lobby, my true avocation is tonsil hockey". Nov 25, 2009
PossibleUnderscore Love the pronunciation. The t's leap out of the speakers! Nov 25, 2009
Jubjub I'm going to quote this possible etymology and let it speak for itself:
O.E. cudele "the cuttlefish;" perhaps related to M.L.G. küdel "container, pocket;" O.N. koddi "cushion, testicle;" and O.E. codd (see cod).
No-- that can't speak for itself; I'll have to ruin it. But something to note: the prominence of the 'd' in the provenance of the 't'. (Makes you wonder where the 't' comes from.) Nov 25, 2009
bilby I pronounce those Ts. The risk of snuggling up to inky stinkies is far too great to run.
ptero, it was a meeting of a food lobby group ... think locavore, permaculture, organic stuff. Nov 25, 2009
uselessness I think you just poked my eyes out with those finely sharpened Ts, 'nach! Next time file 'em down a bit, will ya? :-D Nov 25, 2009
sionnach An OPI, am I? Listen to the way these words trip mellifluously off my tongue, and weep!
The moment I enunciated "cuttlefish" for the third time, my kitchen filled up with inky cephalopods, so, if you'll excuse me, I have to tear myself away and go deal with this "situation". Nov 25, 2009
yarb If I had a mic I'd be blowing your cuddly minds right now. Nov 25, 2009
uselessness Indeed. I'm going to label anyone who pronounces the two differently as an Overly Pretentious Individual. Just because you can emphasize the hard Ts, doesn't mean you should. ;-) Nov 25, 2009
pterodactyl In my dialect, "cuttlefish" and "cuddlefish" are homophones, and I'm having trouble imagining a dialect in which they aren't.
I'm also having trouble imagining what kind of meeting would warrant repeated uses of the word "cuttlefish". Nov 25, 2009
ruzuzu The cuttlefish arms are probably sepia-colored. Not sure what color beetle juice is.
Edit: But here is the Beedle family crest. Nov 24, 2009
sionnach Maybe her coat of arms consists of three cuddlefish rampant on a field of sable.
and, yarb, methinks you are thinking of beedlejuice. Nov 24, 2009
yarb 3 times in a row? Was it some sort of invocation? Nov 24, 2009
bilby A lady at my meeting today pronounced this cuddlefish. 3 times. Cephalopods may indeed be lovelorn but I've never thought of them as cuddly. Nov 24, 2009
chained_bear This is delightful. Dec 23, 2008
mollusque Is he trying to run a motion through under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known "cuttle-fish trick" of the West?
--Rudyard Kipling, 1891, The City of Dreadful Night Nov 9, 2007
reesetee Sadly, the only real cuttlefish I've seen have been the desiccated parts of them that are sold as calcium supplements for birds. Nov 8, 2007
sionnach cephalopod : where the cephalopygian cephalopygmies hang out. Nov 8, 2007
chained_bear I watched an episode of Nova about cuttlefish recently. I had never known what intricate and complex creatures they are.
I also love the word cephalopod. Nov 8, 2007
chained_bear Well, I *had* typed "holy mackerel!" but then decided that was a lousy pun, even if it was unintentional. And schmoley was the best I could come up with.
I'm having an off-day, what can I say? Nov 8, 2007
sonofgroucho Holy schmoley? I agree that is a bizarre quotation from mollusque. Nov 8, 2007
chained_bear Holy schmoley! My compliments, mollusque, on a wonderful citation! Nov 8, 2007
mollusque As to his blood, I suppose the family quarterings are three cuttle-fish sable, and a commentator rampant.
--George Eliot, 1872, Middlemarch Nov 8, 2007