Word.ws English Dictionary

ophiure

ophiure noun: any echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea.

Noun

ophiure (plural ophiures)

  1. (rare) Any echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea
    • SHORT-SPINED OPHIURE.1815, William Elford Leach, Richard P. Nodder, The zoological miscellany, page 59
    • In the Ophiure, the arms are of great length, and in Euryale, each arm, directly it stretches out beyond the body, divides into two branches, and these again into others, which again and again divide, assuming the appearance of interweaving branches of a tree, and which they employ for entangling...1845, Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, volume 7, page 269

Examples of ophiure in a sentence

  • From the bottom of his nets a fisherman one day gave me three almost dying creatures, a sea hedgehog, a sea star, and another star, a pretty ophiure, which still moved and soon lost its delicate arms.1864, The sea, translator unknown, original by M. J. Michelet, page 128
  • Their food consisted of shells, worms, and Ophiures.1889, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, volume 15, Edinburgh: Royal Society, page 219:
  • As for the species level, ophiures Amphiodia urtica dominate.1999, Oceanology, volume 39, American Geophysical Union, page 87:

Synonyms of ophiure

Forms of ophiure

pluralophiures

Origin of ophiure

From translingual genus name Ophiura (originally species name in Linnaeus), from New Latin ophiurus (“brittle star”), from Ancient Greek ὄφις (óphis, “serpent”) + οὐρά (ourá, “tail”) (referring to the serpent-like arms of the brittle star). This English form by conflation with suffix -ure (“result of an action; official procedure”).

Questions about ophiure

What does ophiure mean?
Ophiure means any echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea.
How do you use ophiure in a sentence?
From the bottom of his nets a fisherman one day gave me three almost dying creatures, a sea hedgehog, a sea star, and another star, a pretty ophiure, which still moved and soon lost its delicate arms.
What part of speech is ophiure?
Ophiure is a noun.
What is the plural of ophiure?
The plural of ophiure is ophiures.

Words near ophiure in the dictionary

  1. Ophiuchid
  2. Ophiuchids
  3. Ophiuchus
  4. ophiuran
  5. ophiurans
  6. ophiure
  7. ophiures
  8. ophiurid
  9. ophiurids
  10. ophiurioid
  11. ophiurioids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ophiure (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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