sea firefly
sea firefly noun: vargula hilgendorfii, a small bioluminescent ostracod found in the waters off Japan.
Noun
sea firefly (plural sea fireflies)
- Vargula hilgendorfii, a small bioluminescent ostracod found in the waters off Japan.
- […] sea fireflies. In some cases, the strings of light that sea fireflies (bioluminescent ostracods) produce rise up off the bottom. In other cases, they may be horizontal or diagonal, like drifting strands of glowing pearls.2021, Edith Widder, Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and ..., page 211
- […] how nocturnal sea fireflies (Cypridina) eject luminous blue light in the sands off the coast of Japan. Their emission of light—or “bioluminescence”—does not burn them from within like a bulb's heat. It is a “cold light,” the energy from a chemical […]2022, Kristy Hamilton, Nature's Wild Ideas: How the Natural World is Inspiring ...
Forms of sea firefly
| plural | sea fireflies |
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Origin of sea firefly
Calque of Japanese 海蛍 (umihotaru).
Questions about sea firefly
- What does sea firefly mean?
- Sea firefly means vargula hilgendorfii, a small bioluminescent ostracod found in the waters off Japan.
- What part of speech is sea firefly?
- Sea firefly is a noun.
- What is the plural of sea firefly?
- The plural of sea firefly is sea fireflies.
Words near sea firefly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sea firefly (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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Cite this entry: “sea firefly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sea_firefly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.