Word.ws English Dictionary

madreporal

madreporal adjective: characteristic of or associated with reef coral of genus Madrepora; madreporic.

Adjective

madreporal (not comparable)

  1. Characteristic of or associated with reef coral of genus Madrepora; madreporic.
    • As the Nautilus headed for Clermont-Tonnere, one of the curious islands of the group discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva, I prepared to study the madreporal system that has created these particular isle.1870, Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    • The instrument is about twenty feet above sea level, and is built on ground composed of hard madreporal rock.1914, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America - Volume 4, page 223
  2. Pertaining to a sieve-like plate in echinoderms, which admits water into the ambulacral tubes;
    • Between these vascular rings there is a long muscular heart, which, united to the calcareous pouch or cord, extends from the madreporal plate to the mouth.1874, Carl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, Anatomy of the Invertebrata
    • Its constituents are all coalesced into one piece, the madreporal filter spreading its pores over its central forepart.1883, Sven Ludvig Lovén, Kongl. Svenska Vetenskaps-Akademiens Handlingar, page 80

Examples of madreporal in a sentence

  • Looking out to sea, the eye rests on a fringe of madreporal shelves over which the blue waves, broken farther out in a line of silvery foam, come lazily.1926, The Philippine Journal of Science - Volume 31, page 302:
  • The water-vascular system communicates with the exterior by a separate canal through a single pore or a cluster of pores, the hydropore, situated in the so-called madreporal inter-radius.1981, Pieter D. Nieuwkoop, Lien A. Sutasurya, Primordial Germ Cells in the Invertebrates, →ISBN:
  • Dorsal view with genital plates and large, sievelike madreporal plate in the center, below which is the large, anal field (periproct), shaded dark.1993, Otto H. Schindewolf, Wolf-Ernst Reif, Basic Questions in Paleontology:

Origin of madreporal

Madrepora + -al

Questions about madreporal

What does madreporal mean?
Madreporal means characteristic of or associated with reef coral of genus Madrepora; madreporic.
How do you use madreporal in a sentence?
Looking out to sea, the eye rests on a fringe of madreporal shelves over which the blue waves, broken farther out in a line of silvery foam, come lazily.
What part of speech is madreporal?
Madreporal is an adjective.

Words near madreporal in the dictionary

  1. Madrazos
  2. Madre de Dios
  3. Madrean
  4. Madrecha
  5. madreperl
  6. madreporal
  7. madreporarian
  8. madreporarians
  9. madrepore
  10. madrepores
  11. madreporian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: madreporal (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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