Word.ws English Dictionary

copepod

/ˈkoʊpɪpɒd/

copepod noun: any of very many small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda; they are widely distributed and ecologically important.

copepod: any of very many small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda; they are widely distributed and...
Image: Andrei Savitsky, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

copepod (plural copepods)

  1. Any of very many small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda; they are widely distributed and ecologically important.
    • To eat, the whale takes a wide-open gulp of water and closes its jaws to a slit so that as it pushes its tongue forwards and upwards, water is forced through the baleen while the copepods, krill and other animals it likes to eat remain in its mouth.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 270

Forms of copepod

pluralcopepods

Origin of copepod

Learned borrowing from taxonomic name Copepoda.

Words formed from copepod

Questions about copepod

What does copepod mean?
Copepod means any of very many small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda; they are widely distributed and ecologically important.
What part of speech is copepod?
Copepod is a noun.
How do you pronounce copepod?
Copepod is pronounced /ˈkoʊpɪpɒd/.
What is the plural of copepod?
The plural of copepod is copepods.

Words near copepod in the dictionary

  1. Copenhaver
  2. Copenhavers
  3. copenned
  4. copenning
  5. copens
  6. copepod
  7. copepodid
  8. copepodids
  9. copepodite
  10. copepodites
  11. copepodological

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: copepod (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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