Word.ws English Dictionary

glaucus

UK/ˈɡlɔːkəs//ˈɡlɔkəs/

glaucus noun: any member of the genus Glaucus of nudibranchiate mollusks, found in the warmer latitudes, swimming in the open sea, strikingly colored with blue and silvery white.

glaucus: any member of the genus Glaucus of nudibranchiate mollusks, found in the warmer latitudes, swimming...
Image: Taro Taylor from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

glaucus (plural glaucuses)

  1. Any member of the genus Glaucus of nudibranchiate mollusks, found in the warmer latitudes, swimming in the open sea, strikingly colored with blue and silvery white.
    Synonyms:
    sea swallow, blue angel, blue glaucus, blue dragon, blue sea slug, blue ocean slug
  2. A desert lime (Citrus glauca), a thorny shrub species endemic to semi-arid regions of Australia.
    • This pass is extremely abrupt, and is covered with glaucus, the low scrub I have noticed as common to the sand-stone formation.1833, Charles Sturt, Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete

Proper noun capitalized: Glaucus

Glaucus

  1. (Greek) A Greek prophetic sea god, born mortal and turned immortal upon eating a magical herb. It was believed that he commonly came to the rescue of sailors and fishermen in storms, having once been one himself.
  2. (Greek) A mythical Lycian soldier and captain in the Trojan War.
  3. (Greek) Son of Sisyphus, and a mythical Corinthian king.
  4. (Greek) Son of king Minos.
  5. (Greek) one of the sons of Priam.
  6. (Greek) A son of Aepytus.
  7. (Greek) One of the twelve younger Panes.

Synonyms of glaucus

All synonyms of glaucus

Forms of glaucus

pluralglaucuses

Origin of glaucus

Borrowed from translingual Glaucus, from Latin glaucus, from Ancient Greek γλαῦκος (glaûkos, “blue-grey fish”), from γλαυκός (glaukós, “blue-green, blue-grey”).

From Ancient Greek Γλαῦκος (Glaûkos, from γλαυκός (glaukós, literally “greyish-blue, bluish-green, glimmering”)).

Words that rhyme with glaucus

Questions about glaucus

What does glaucus mean?
Glaucus means any member of the genus Glaucus of nudibranchiate mollusks, found in the warmer latitudes, swimming in the open sea, strikingly colored with blue and silvery white.
What part of speech is glaucus?
Glaucus can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce glaucus?
Glaucus is pronounced /ˈɡlɔːkəs/ (UK).
What is the plural of glaucus?
The plural of glaucus is glaucuses.

Words near glaucus in the dictionary

  1. glaucous willow
  2. glaucous-winged gull
  3. glaucous-winged gulls
  4. glaucously
  5. glaucousness
  6. glaucus
  7. glaucuses
  8. Glaude
  9. Glaudes
  10. Glauert's seadragon
  11. Glauke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glaucus (page history and authors); Glaucus (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sumxr-Glaucus.wav.

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