Word.ws English Dictionary

sea purse

sea purse is the alternative form of sea-purse.

sea purse is the alternative form of sea puss.

Meaning of sea-purse

Noun

sea-purse (plural sea-purses)

  1. The egg case of skate, shark or ratfish; a mermaid's purse.
  2. The sea bean Dioclea reflexa.

Meaning of sea puss

Noun

sea puss (plural sea pusses)

  1. A strong seaward current; a riptide or undertow, especially as results when a sandbar formed by waves suddenly gives way, and which is dangerous to swimmers.
    • Sometimes owing to a peculiar formation of the coast, the waves are brought together in an angle, indenting the shore in such a way that this return flow, or undertow, runs out to sea in a continuous stream, which is called a sea-puss. The sea-puss is of variable width—from twenty or thirty feet to...1877 August, N. B. Emerson, “Sea-Bathing”, in The Sailors' Magazine and Seamen's Friend, volume 49, number 8, page 227
  2. The (flowing) channel which results when a cut is made (often deliberately by humans) in a barrier beach which separates a bay from an ocean, so as to control the water level in the bay (which affects water mills) and its salinity (which affects shellfish).

Forms of sea purse

pluralsea purses

Questions about sea purse

What is sea purse the alternative form of?
Sea purse is the alternative form of sea-purse.

Words near sea purse in the dictionary

  1. sea puddings
  2. sea pumpkin
  3. sea pumpkins
  4. sea puppies
  5. sea puppy
  6. sea purse
  7. sea purses
  8. sea puss
  9. sea pusses
  10. sea pye
  11. sea pyes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sea purse (page history and authors); sea-purse (page history and authors); sea puss (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “sea purse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sea_purse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.