Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A large South American freshwater food fish (Arapaima gigas) that can attain a length of up to 3 meters (10 feet).
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The name of the largest known fresh-water fish, Arapaima gigas, an inhabitant of Brazil and Guiana, said to attain a length of 15 feet and a weight of 400 pounds. It is of economical importance as a food-fish.
- noun [capitalized] [NL.] A genus of malacopterygian abdominal fishes, of the family Osteoglossidœ, remarkable for their size and the mosaic work of their hard bony compound scales. A. gigas is an example.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) A large fresh-water food fish of South America.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large carnivorous predatory South American
tropical freshwater fish , Arapaima gigas. It is the largest scaled freshwater fish in the world. It is a primitive fish.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Apparently at 15 feet in length, the arapaima is the largest fish in the Amazon.
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Apparently at 15 feet in length, the arapaima is the largest fish in the Amazon.
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The arapaima is the largest freshwater fish with scales in the world.
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The site protects the largest array of electric fish in the world and key threatened species such as the giant arapaima fish, Amazonian manatee, black caiman and two species of river dolphin.
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Visitors walk through a series of geographical-themed displays that cover a range of aquatic species, from frogs in the "Highlands" display to the "Amazon Flooded Forest" section where there's a rare South American freshwater fish, a three-meter-long arapaima.
Finding Nemo 2008
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Equally daunting is the prospect of moving a six-foot-long arapaima, a fish able to leap as high as three feet out of water.
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When we walked into the Amazon Gallery, the arapaima stopped me dead in my tracks.
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When we walked into the Amazon Gallery, the arapaima stopped me dead in my tracks.
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Some very huge arapaima also, which are air breathing fish that grow up to fourteen feet.
Cool things at the Dallas World Aquarium | Letter Never Sent 2005
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"Presently, one kilogram of arapaima fish sells for 30 Brazilian reais (US$ 17) at the market, and up to 50 reais (US$ 28.5) in supermarkets," she says.
Home Isabela Barros 2010
Wordplayer commented on the word arapaima
It's the largest freshwater fish in the world, but somehow it is unlisted!
April 14, 2012