Word.ws English Dictionary

phocine

/ˈfəʊsʌɪn/

phocine adjective: pertaining to true seals (also known as earless seals, as opposed to eared seals such as sea lions); seallike.

Adjective

phocine (comparative more phocine, superlative most phocine)

  1. Pertaining to true seals (also known as earless seals, as opposed to eared seals such as sea lions); seallike.
    • The bargain was soon made, and Gioga equipped herself in her phocine garb, but when the Shetlander gazed on the stormy sea he was to ride through, his courage nearly failed him, and he begged of the old lady to hare the kindness to allow him to cut a few holes in her shoulders and flanks, that he...1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 268
    • He telegraphed to the whaling ports of New England, and sent messages to San Francisco and Alaska, to know if a group of sea lions and other specimens of the phocine tribe could be secured.28 December 1871, New York Daily Standard

Noun

phocine (plural phocines)

  1. A member of the subfamily Phocinae, comprising the "true" or "earless" seals.
    • Phocines anchor their hands by flexing their fingers, digging them into the substrate, and then pulling their body forward by elbow and shoulder flexion.2007, Brian Keith Hall, Fins into Limbs, page 313

Examples of phocine in a sentence

  • […] she had already yanked out of me the coveted section [of the newspaper] and retreated to her mat near her phocine mamma.1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC, part...
  • She walked over towards me with an odd elegance, big strides, like a champion girl swimmer, say; muscled but lean, with a phocine grace.1987, William Boyd, The New Confessions:

Forms of phocine

Adjective
comparativemore phocine
superlativemost phocine
Noun
pluralphocines

Origin of phocine

From Latin phōca (“seal”) (from Ancient Greek φώκη (phṓkē)) + -ine.

Questions about phocine

What does phocine mean?
Phocine means pertaining to true seals (also known as earless seals, as opposed to eared seals such as sea lions); seallike.
How do you use phocine in a sentence?
[…] she had already yanked out of me the coveted section [of the newspaper] and retreated to her mat near her phocine mamma.
What part of speech is phocine?
Phocine can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce phocine?
Phocine is pronounced /ˈfəʊsʌɪn/ (UK).

Words near phocine in the dictionary

  1. Phocian
  2. Phocians
  3. phocicide
  4. phocid
  5. phocids
  6. phocine
  7. phocines
  8. Phocis
  9. phocoenid
  10. phocoenids
  11. phocoid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phocine (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-phocine.wav.

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