Word.ws English Dictionary

sea monk

sea monk noun: monk seal.

sea monk: monk seal
Image: Johannes Sluperius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sea monk (plural sea monks)

  1. (dated) Monk seal.
  2. A sea creature in European folklore (in the 16th century), a sort of fish that resembled (and was sometimes robed or tonsured like) a European monk.
    • […] three sea monks being found in 1530, 1546 and 1549. In fact the first sea monk was not a sea monk at all, having been found in the Rhine. The second one was found near Copenhagen with a black head and the clothes of a monk and the final one was found near Hafnia (Copenhagen), tonsured like a...2005, Steenstrupia, volume 29, pages 40–45
    • Sea monks had failed to assert themselves into the popular imagination the way mermaids had. They lacked a certain appeal. The few pictorial depictions stuck a tonsured human head on a fish body, scaly fins and tail forming the monk's ...2019, Holly MacArthur, Tin House 80: 20th Anniversary Edition

Forms of sea monk

pluralsea monks

Questions about sea monk

What does sea monk mean?
Sea monk means monk seal.
What part of speech is sea monk?
Sea monk is a noun.
What is the plural of sea monk?
The plural of sea monk is sea monks.

Words near sea monk in the dictionary

  1. sea miles
  2. sea milkwort
  3. sea milkworts
  4. Sea Mills
  5. sea mink
  6. sea monk
  7. sea monkey
  8. sea monkeys
  9. sea monks
  10. sea monster
  11. sea monsters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sea monk (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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