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Definitions (75)

American Heritage Dictionary (18)

noun Any of numerous aquatic, chiefly marine invertebrate animals of the phylum Porifera, characteristically having a porous skeleton composed of fibrous material or siliceous or calcareous spicules and often forming irregularly shaped colonies attached to an underwater surface.
noun The light, fibrous, flexible, absorbent skeleton of certain of these organisms, used for bathing, cleaning, and other purposes.
noun Porous plastics, rubber, cellulose, or other material, similar in absorbency to this skeleton and used for the same purposes.

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Century Dictionary (45)

A fixed aquatic organism of a low order, various in form and texture, composed of an aggregate of amœbiform bodies disposed about a common cavity provided with one or more inhalent and exhalent orifices (ostioles and oscules), through which water pours in and out. The proper sponge-substance is traversed by a water-vascular system or set of irrigating canals, and in nearly all cases is supported and strengthened by a skeleton in the form of horny fibers, or silicious or calcareous spicules. The streaming of the water is kept up by the vibration of cilia in the water-vascular system—that is, by the lashing of flagella borne upon the individual sponge-cells. These so much resemble flagellate infusorians that some naturalists regard sponges as compound infusorians, and consequently as protozoans. Those cells which have definite form are spindle shaped, or flask-shaped, and provided with flagella, round the base of which there may be a little rim or collar, as in those infusorians known as collar-bearing monads, or Choanoflagellata. Sponges propagate by budding or gemmation, a process involving cell-fission or ordinary division of cells. They also reproduce sexually by ova and spermatozoa. Sponge-germs resulting from fission are called gemmules. The spermatozoa are spindle-shaped. The ova are like ordinary amœbiform cells, and are usually shed into the canals and pass out of the system to be developed; in some species they develop in the substance of the parent. The embryo forms a hollow ball with a ciliated cavity, and then acquires inhalent and exhalent pores. The living tissue proper of sponges is disposed in three layers or sets of cells, as in all higher animals. These are an ectoderm, cuticle, or out-layer; an endoderm, innermost layer, or in-layer; and a mesoderm, middle layer, or mid-layer, which may be quite thick. It is from the mid-layer that the reproductive elements, and all the many forms of skeletal elements, are derived. Special sense-organs have been described in some sponges. (See cut under synocil.) Sponges as a class or phylum of animals have many technical names—as Acnidophora, because they have no cnidæ or stinging-organs (compare Cnidaria); Amorphozoa, from their shapelessness, or rather their many shapes; Parazoa, from their position with respect to both Protozoa and Metazoa; Porifera, Poriferata, Porozoa, and Polystomata, from their many pores or openings (see cut under Porifera); Spongiæ, Spongiaria, Spongida, Spongiozoa, etc. They are divided into various primary groups, the most tangible of which are two—the chalk-sponges, or Calcispongiæ, and the fibrous and flinty sponges, or Silicispongiæ. But the leading authorities differ irreconcilably in the arrangement and nomenclature of the many orders, families, and genera they respectively adopt; and the opinion has been expressed that the sponges are not susceptible of satisfactory treatment by the ordinary methods of zoölogical classification. See also cuts under ciliate, Spongilla, monadiform, Euplectella, and Hyalonemidæ.
The fibrous framework of a colony of sponge-animalcules, from which the animalcules themselves have been washed out, and from which the gritty or sandy parts of the colony, if there were any, have been taken away. See skeleton, 1 . The framework of sponges is of different character in the several orders. The slime-sponges have none, or scarcely any. In the ordinary fibrous sponges the skeleton is a quantity of interlacing fibers and layers, forming an intricate network. This is further strengthened in the chalky and glassy sponges by hard spicules, either separately embedded in the general skeletal substance, called ceratode, or solidified in a kind of latticework. (See Calcispongiæ, Silicispongiæ.) The chalk-needles or calcareous spicules are either straight or oftener rayed in three-armed or four-armed crosses. The sand-needles or silicious spicules present an extraordinary and beautiful variety. Among them are many starry figures and wheel-like forms, resembling snow-crystals; others are still more curious, in the forms of crosses, anchors, grapnels, shirt-studs, bodkins, etc. The six-rayed star is the characteristic shape in the glass-sponges. (See Hexactinellida.) Sponge-spicules are named in an elaborate special vocabulary. (See sponge-spicule.) The glass-sponges have some commercial value from their beauty as objects of curiosity; but a few of the fibrous sponges are the only others out of many hundreds of species, both fossil and recent, of any economic importance. Sponges, when wetted, swell to a much greater size, and become very flexible; they are therefore used as vehicles and absorbents of water and other liquids, in wiping or cleansing surfaces, erasing marks, as from a slate, etc. See bath-sponge, Euspongia, and Hippospongia. The Spounge, and the Reed, of the whiche the Jewes zaven oure Lord Eyselle and Galle, in the Cros. Mandeville, Travels, p. 10.
Any sponge-like substance. In baking, dough before it is kneaded and formed, when full of globules of carbonic acid generated by the yeast or leaven. A metal when obtained in a finely divided condition, the particles having little coherence, and the mass more or less of a spongy texture. Thus, a “metallic sponge” of iron is obtained by the reduction of brown hematite ore by cementation with charcoal in the so-called “Chenot process” for the manufacture of steel. Spongy iron is also prepared on a large scale by the reduction of various ores, and in this form is used for purifying water. Platinum-sponge may be prepared by gently heating the double chlorid of platinum and ammonium. Platinum-black is a black powder not differing much in its properties from platinum-sponge, except that it is less dense; it may be made to take on the spongy character by repeated ignition in a mixture of air and a combustible gas: both are used as oxidizing agents.

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Examples (50)

Now a sponge was dabbing at the second hole from underneath—but it was going too fast; the widening rim of the opening resumed its hissing and smoking as the sponge passed on. — The Nitrogen Fix
Some of the brightest colors in nature are created by tiny nanostructures with a structure similar to beer foam or a sponge, according ...
But the advantage or benefit of regularly consuming fibre-rich foods is that most fibres absorb water like a sponge, and this helps fill the intestines and thus stimulates them to increased activity. — Welcome to the Frontpage
One thing nice about this sponge is the light color shows you instantly when it is dirty and ready to be replaced. — Epinions Recent Content for Home
But it should never be put over hardboard siding; it absorbs water like a sponge, and wet hardboard will never dry under the vinyl. — Boston.com Most Popular

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English, from Old English, from Latin spongia, from Greek spongiā, from spongos.

Century Dictionary (2)

Formerly also spunge; from Middle English sponge, spunge, spounge (= Dutch spongie, spons), from Old French esponge, French éponge = Provencal esponja, esponga = Spanish Portuguese esponja = Italian spogna, spugna = Anglo-Saxon sponge = Gaelic Irish sponc, from Latin spongia, from Greek σπογγιά, also σπόγγος (Attic σφόγγος), a sponge, any spongy substance, = Latin fungus, a mushroom, fungus; perhaps akin to Greek σομφός, spongy, porous, and to Danish Swedish svamp, a sponge, fungus, = Icelandic svöppr, a sponge, and so to Gothic (Moesogothic) swamms, a sponge, = Old High German swam, swamp, Middle High German swam, swamp (swamb-), German schwamm = Middle Low German swam, swamp, Low German swamm, swamp, a sponge, fungus: see swamp, and cf. spunk and fungus.
Formerly also spunge; = Dutch sponsen = French éponger = Spanish esponjar, sponge, from Late Latin spongiare, wipe off with a sponge; cf. Greek σπογγίζειν, sponge; from the noun.

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