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  1. sculpin love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of various marine and freshwater fishes of the family Cottidae, having a large flattened head and prominent spines.
  2. n. A scorpion fish (Scorpaena guttata) of California coastal waters. Also called sea scorpion.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A callionymoid fish, Callionymus lyra, having at the angle of the preoperculum a strong compressed dentate spine; a dragonet: more fully called yellow sculpin. See dragonet, 2, and cut under Callionymus.
  2. n. A mean or mischief-making fellow.
  3. n. A cottoid fish, especially of the genus Cottus (or Acanthocottus), as C. scorpius of the northern Atlantic; C. grœnlandicus, the daddysculpin; C. æneus, the grubby of the New England and New York coasts. One of the commonest on the Atlantic coast of the United States is C. octodecimspinosus. All these fishes are of ugly aspect, unshapely, with very large spiny head, wide mouth, comparatively slender tapering body, and irregularly mottled coloration. They inhabit the northern seas, and are especially numerous in the northern Pacific. They are used by the native Indians as food, but are generally held in contempt by the whites. In California a marketable cottoid, the bighead or cabezon, Scorpænichthys marmoratus, is also called sculpin.
  4. n. A hemitripteroid fish, Hemitripterus acadianus, occurring in deeper water than the true sculpins off the northeastern coast of America. Also called deep-water sculpin, yellow sculpin, and sea-raven. See cut under sea-raven.
  5. n. A scorpænoid fish, Scorpæna guttata, of the southern Californian coast, there called scorpene. See cut under Scorpæna.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A small fish of the family Cottidae, usually lacking scales. Often found on river bottoms and in tidal pools.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Any one of numerous species of marine cottoid fishes of the genus Cottus, or Acanthocottus, having a large head armed with several sharp spines, and a broad mouth. They are generally mottled with yellow, brown, and black. Several species are found on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and America.
  2. n. A large cottoid market fish of California (Scorpænichthys marmoratus); -- called also bighead, cabezon, scorpion, salpa.
  3. n. The dragonet, or yellow sculpin, of Europe (Callionymus lyra).

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. any of numerous spiny large-headed usually scaleless scorpaenoid fishes with broad mouths

Etymologies

  1. Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “I wuz wid yer gran'pa at Fort Mimms, down erbout Mobile, an 'I seed 'em killin' folks an 'sculpin' uv 'em; an, mo'n dat, ef'n I hadn't er crope under er log, an 'flattent myse'f out like er allergator, dey'd er got me; an' den, ergin, dey don't talk like no folks.”

    Diddi, Dumps, and Tot

  • “Seems that Lake Michigan gobie population densities are increasing, while alewife and sculpin populations are decreasing, with overall prey fish populations decreasing, affecting salmon, steelhead, and lake trout.”

    Over the years I have seen what was once a florishing ecosystem of fish survive.

  • “Most of the time, olive, sculpin, brown or black will work better than lighter colors.”

    All About Jigs

  • “So our moss green or olive jigs, as well as sculpin (olive/brown), brown and blacks match the color of sculpin quite well.”

    All About Jigs

  • “Then I try black, sculpin/peach, purple, brown and brown/orange in that order.”

    All About Jigs

  • “Colors - white has been the best by far but should have an olive, sculpin, purple, black or brown/orange ready just in case.”

    Lake Taneycomo

  • “Conehead pine squirrel sculpin would have to be my choice.”

    What's your favorite fly?

  • “For bottom dwelling species like catfish and sculpin, electrofishing can work, like the old crank phone boxes meantioned by CGULL above, but the data is not as reliable, as the fish do not float to the surface as effectively when shocked, preventing consistent data.”

    I was reading about a lake and it said that it had an electrofishing catch rate of 123 fish per hour, what is this supposed to m

  • “In estuarine habitats, there are likely to be shifts in species composition to more euryhaline and anadromous species (e.g., fourhorn sculpin – Myoxocephalus quadricornis, ninespine stickleback – Pungitius pungitius, threespine stickleback – Gasterosteus aculeatus, Arctic flounder – Pleuronectes glacialis, salmonines, and coregonines).”

    Changes in aquatic biota and ecosystem structure and function in the Arctic

  • “Fish species are lake trout, Arctic grayling, round whitefish (Prosopium cylindraceum), burbot, and slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus), which feed on benthic chironomid larvae and snails, the latter controlling epilithic algae in the lake.”

    Effects of climate change on hydro-ecology of contributing basins in the Arctic

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hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. scorpaenoid
  1. scorpaenoid fish

hyponyms (6)

Words that are more specific

  1. miller's thumb
  1. grubby
  1. myxocephalus aenaeus
  1. hemitripterus americanus
  1. bullhead
  1. sea raven

reverse dictionary (27)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. grubby
  2. sea raven
  3. bullhead
  4. hemitripterus americanus
  5. miller's thumb
  1. myxocephalus aenaeus
  2. skulpin
  3. sea scorpion
  4. daddy-sculpin
  5. sculpin
  1. sea-raven
  2. sea-scorpion
  3. johnny
  4. father-lasher
  5. drummer
  1. dragonet
  2. cabezon
  3. enophrys
  4. kalog
  5. bighead
  1. illeck
  2. Myxocephalus
  3. pigfish
  4. sea dragon
  5. sea toad
  1. scorpion
  2. sea-toad

tags (3)

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  1. animal
  1. fish
  1. ccvccvc

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  • fbharjo sculpin Oct 25, 2009

  • sionnach See this languagehat post: sculpin Jun 26, 2009

  • chained_bear "The sculpin, or 'bullhead,' as the people of Savoonga called the fish, were yellowish green and black, about ten inches long, with bloated, oversized heads."
    —James Campbell, The Final Frontiersman (New York and London: Atria Books, 2004), 93 Sep 17, 2008

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‘sculpin’ has been looked up 1000 times, added to 11 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 11.