Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-ringed octopus

blue-ringed octopus noun: any member of any species of the genus Hapalochlaena of octopuses, with distinctive blue rings, that carry the highly poisonous venom tetrodotoxin (TTX).

blue-ringed octopus: any member of any species of the genus Hapalochlaena of octopuses, with distinctive blue rings,...
Image: Elias Levy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

blue-ringed octopus (plural blue-ringed octopuses or (nonstandard) blue-ringed octopusses or (nonstandard) blue-ringed octopi or (nonstandard) blue-ringed octopii or (rare) blue-ringed octopodes or (rare, nonstandard) blue-ringed octopus)

  1. Any member of any species of the genus Hapalochlaena of octopuses, with distinctive blue rings, that carry the highly poisonous venom tetrodotoxin (TTX).
    • In terms of diversity, cephalopods include the egg case making argonauts, shelled nautiluses, venomous blue-ringed octopuses and enigmatic giants like the giant and colossal squid. […] The blue-ringed octopus Hapalochlaena lunulata has tetrodotoxin, the deadly toxin it also releases in a bite, in...2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 15 Mar 2023

Forms of blue-ringed octopus

pluralblue-ringed octopuses
plural (nonstandard)blue-ringed octopusses
plural (nonstandard)blue-ringed octopi
plural (nonstandard)blue-ringed octopii
plural (rare)blue-ringed octopodes
plural (nonstandard, rare)blue-ringed octopus

Origin of blue-ringed octopus

From blue + ringed + octopus. From being an octopus with very prominent bright blue rings all over its body.

Questions about blue-ringed octopus

What does blue-ringed octopus mean?
Blue-ringed octopus means any member of any species of the genus Hapalochlaena of octopuses, with distinctive blue rings, that carry the highly poisonous venom tetrodotoxin (TTX).
What part of speech is blue-ringed octopus?
Blue-ringed octopus is a noun.
What is the plural of blue-ringed octopus?
The plural of blue-ringed octopus is blue-ringed octopuses.

Words near blue-ringed octopus in the dictionary

  1. blue-red
  2. blue-ribbon
  3. blue-ringed octopi
  4. blue-ringed octopii
  5. blue-ringed octopodes
  6. blue-ringed octopus
  7. blue-ringed octopuses
  8. blue-ringed octopusses
  9. blue-rinse
  10. blue-rinse brigade
  11. blue-rinsed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-ringed octopus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blue-ringed octopus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue-ringed_octopus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.