oyster

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (6)  · 
“
And when he came to the place where the oyster was accustomed to swim and the shark to follow, he seated himself there upon a rock, watching for an opportunity of catching the pearl alone without its admirer.

View all »
Definitions (54)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. noun Any of several edible bivalve mollusks of the family Ostreidae, especially of the genera Crassostrea and Ostrea, that live chiefly in shallow marine waters and have a rough, irregularly shaped shell.
  2. noun Any of various similar or related bivalve mollusks, such as the pearl oyster.
  3. noun An edible bit of muscle found in the hollow of the pelvic bone of a fowl.
4 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (42)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (4)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • At the turn of the century the oyster was a multi-million dollar industry for Long Island (New York). —  Analog October 1971
  • According to oysters farmers cited by weekly magazine Marianne, the culprit is the triploid oyster, which is modified to give it three pairs of chromosomes instead of two, as is the case with common oysters. —  European Tribune
  • The world is your oyster, as it were, when it comes to adding external files into GE.
  • Just like with a bad bottle of wine, getting a bad oyster is a huge turn off. —  Scientific Blogging
  • That job falls to the pearl oyster which is in the genus pinctada. —  Scientific Blogging
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 108 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English oistre, from Old French, from Latin ostreum, ostrea, from Greek ostreon; see ost- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also oister, oistre; from Middle English *oyster, oystur, oystre, eyster, ostyre, from Old French oistre, ouistre, huistre, French huítre = Provencal Spanish Portuguese ostra = Italian ostrea, now ostrica = Anglo-Saxon ōstre = Dutch oester (later G. ūster, now auster) = Icelandic Swedish ostra = Danish östers, from Latin ostrea, feminine, rarely ostreum, neuter, from Greek ὄστρεον, an oyster, named from its hard shell (cf. ὅστρακον, a shell, potsherd, earthen vessel: see ostracize, etc.), akin to ὀστέον, a bone, shell, Latin os (oss-), a bone: see os.
  2. from oyster, n.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈɔɪstər/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a week.

Recently looked up

foolproof · tipple · multifunctional · horror · Bangkok

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich