Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The collection of organisms living on or in the bottom of a body of water.
  • noun The bottom of a body of water.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The plants and animals that live in the sea-bottom, and those that are attached to its surface, and those that creep or run over it: a collective noun introduced by Haeckel. The benthos is contrasted with the plankton, or floating and swimming fauna and flora of the sea. It includes all the marine macrophytic algæ, also some phanerogams, the sea-grasses (see sea-grass, 1), as well as an abundance of microphytic algæ (diatoms, etc.). It is divided into the sedentary and the vagile or vagrant benthos, the former including organisms attached to the bottom, the latter those moving over it. See plankton, nekton.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot. & Zoöl.) The bottom of the sea, esp. of the deep oceans

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The flora and fauna at the bottom of the ocean or other body of water.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun organisms (plants and animals) that live at or near the bottom of a sea
  • noun a region including the bottom of the sea and the littoral zones

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek βένθος (benthos, "the depths").

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Examples

Comments

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  • If costs of the oil spill are rightly assessed
    Then lovers of seafood are mightily blessed.
    They've bathed the whole benthos
    In a savory dense sauce
    So fish in the nets come up ready-dressed.

    February 19, 2014

  • The definition supplied with the Word of the Day message has a curiously biblical (that is, King James) sound to it:
    "The plants and animals that live in the sea-bottom, and those that are

    attached to its surface, and those that creep or run over it."
    I think it comes from the use of polysyndeton. The somewhat odd application of the prepositions "in" and "over" also contribute an Elizabethan feel.

    February 19, 2014