limpet
/ˈlɪm.pɪt/
limpet noun: any of various gastropods with a conical shell shape (patelliform) and a strong, muscular foot that they use to create strong suction to cling onto rocks or other hard surfaces.
Noun
limpet (plural limpets)
- Any of various gastropods with a conical shell shape (patelliform) and a strong, muscular foot that they use to create strong suction to cling onto rocks or other hard surfaces.
- Someone clingy or dependent; someone disregarding or ignorant of another's personal space.
- He stuck to me like a limpet all day!
Verb
limpet (third-person singular simple present limpets, present participle limpeting, simple past and past participle limpeted)
- To gather limpets.
- Mother visited the little cottage over the hill, and found Lisette's story to be quite correct; and many times the Frenchwoman blessed the day when Margie went limpeting and Lisette lent the old knife to the golden-haired little English lady.1890 JUNE, THE GUERNSEY MAGAZINE A MONTHLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL of INFORMATION, INSTRUCTION & ENTERTAINMENT, volume XVIII, number 6, page 1
- Razor-fishing, sand-eeling and limpeting used to be popular activities but have declined in importance.2024 December 22, Wikipedia contributors, “Culture of Jersey”, in English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation
limpet meaning in Vietnamese
limpet in Vietnamese
- a small mollusc
- con sao sao
Examples of limpet in a sentence
- The rock surface of a rockpool is the substrate for a sessile organism such as a limpet.
- The gull subsists chiefly on limpets and other shell-bearing mollusks.
- Limpet said the effect of this method was to give "Vibration," an explanation which left the curate hopelessly befogged.
Forms of limpet
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | limpets |
| alternative form (dialectal) | limpin |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | limpets |
| present participle | limpeting |
| past participle | limpeted |
| past | limpeted |
Origin of limpet
From Middle English lempet, from Old English lempedu (“lamprey”), borrowed from Medieval Latin lampreda, alteration of Late Latin lampetra (“lamprey”), whose further origin is unknown, though is traditionally thought to derive from lambō (“to lick, lap”) + petra (“stone, rock”). Doublet of lamprey, which came through Old French.
Words formed from limpet
Phrases with limpet
Questions about limpet
- What does limpet mean?
- Limpet means any of various gastropods with a conical shell shape (patelliform) and a strong, muscular foot that they use to create strong suction to cling onto rocks or other hard surfaces.
- What is limpet in Vietnamese?
- Limpet in Vietnamese is con sao sao. See Limpet meaning in Vietnamese.
- What part of speech is limpet?
- Limpet can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce limpet?
- Limpet is pronounced /ˈlɪm.pɪt/.
- What is the plural of limpet?
- The plural of limpet is limpets.
Words near limpet in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: limpet (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)-Vealhurl-limpet.wav.
Cite this entry: “limpet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/limpet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.