Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In Cuvier's system of classification, the second family of pedicellate echinoderms, containing the sea-urchins: equivalent to several modern families, or to the whole of the order or class Echinoidea.
  • [lowercase] Plural of echinus.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • (ALCYONARIA) has a sulphurous savour of its own, and the echini and b阠he-de-mer are also to be separately distinguished by their fumes.

    My Tropic Isle 2003

  • Quite a flock of other little world-echini are doing the same thing, Venus, Mars, and the rest, each with its own field for grazing. '

    When The World Screamed Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir, 1859-1930 1968

  • Quite a flock of other little world-echini are doing the same thing, Venus, Mars, and the rest, each with its own field for grazing. '

    When the World Screamed Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir, 1859-1930 1968

  • As we sailed along the rock, we observed that it is covered with echini, polypii, barnacles, limpets, and crusted with white bivalves less than oysters or cockles, yet containing a fish not unlike the latter in appearance, and the former in flavour.

    Journal of a Voyage to Brazil And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 Maria Graham

  • Globeshaped jelly-fish as big as oranges, great cuttlefish bones flat and shining and white, shark's teeth, spines of echini; sometimes a dead scarus fish, its stomach distended with bits of coral on which it had been feeding; crabs, sea urchins, sea-weeds of strange colour and shape; star-fish, some tiny and of the colour of cayenne pepper, some huge and pale.

    The Blue Lagoon: a romance 1907

  • The skeletonless coral (ALCYONARIA) has a sulphurous savour of its own, and the echini and bêche-de-mer are also to be separately distinguished by their fumes.

    My Tropic Isle 1887

  • Among the molluscs and zoophytes, I found in the meshes of the net several species of alcyonarians, echini, hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleae.

    Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. English Jules Verne 1866

  • Fossils of belemnite, cockles (cardium), and lamp-shells (terebratula) have been found in the chalk, and numerous echini, with the pentagon star on their base, are picked up in the gravels and called by the country people Shepherds 'Crowns -- or even fossil toads.

    John Keble's Parishes Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • "See, the whole beach is covered with beautiful shells, and there may be sea anemones and echini, and star-fish, and all sorts of marine creatures."

    Dick Cheveley His Adventures and Misadventures William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • Superb specimens were secured, -- large boulders crowded with colossal shells and perfectly preserved echini.

    Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Louis Agassiz 1840

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