Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use starfish in a sentence

10 example sentences · noun, verb

Starfish means any of various echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach. Example: “They peeked into the tidepool and found starfish and anemones.”

Examples of starfish by meaning

verbTo assume a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.

  • "Oh you damn bastard, why won't you let anybody love you," and then, before I could stop her, she threw herself between us and the glowing suitcase, starfishing in the blaze of light as he blew up.1981, Kit Reed, Magic Time, page 229
  • The freckle on her eye starfished out and the sun began to move over her face like it does below the surface of water.2020, Becky Manawatu, Auē, page 95

verbTo form into a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.

  • The sea roared up her nostrils, tunnelled into her ears, and flung her forward, then back, the current pulling her fingers apart, starfishing her hands.2011, Polly Williams, It Happened One Summer

More sentences with starfish

  • They peeked into the tidepool and found starfish and anemones.From the entry tidepool
  • A starfish has radial symmetry; a butterfly does not.From the entry radial symmetry
  • The adambulacral ossicles of the starfish.From the entry adambulacral
  • Can you imagine that Doc living all by himself here, with snakes and starfish and octopusses?1956, Richard Rodgers; Oscar, II Hammerstein, Pipe Dream, page 38. From the entry octopusses
  • She sat completely alone at the very back of the sea-themed restaurant, amid papier-mâché starfish and plastic shrimp.2002, Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, Penguin Books (2003), page 236. From the entry papier-mâché
  • She has dropped it by autotomy, like the tail or claw of a fleeing lizard, lobster, or starfish.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae. From the entry autotomy
  • The starfish eats with five fingers.1915, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson, “The How and Why Library”, in Life, Section VIII. From the entry finger

Meaning of starfish

  1. noun Any of various echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach.
  2. noun Any many-armed or tentacled sea invertebrate, whether cnidarian, echinoderm, or cephalopod.
  3. noun A woman (or, less commonly, a gay man) who reluctantly takes part in sexual intercourse, and lies on the back while spreading the limbs.

Full definition of starfish

Questions about starfish in a sentence

How do you use starfish in a sentence?
Starfish is used as a noun and verb. For example: “They peeked into the tidepool and found starfish and anemones.”
What is a short sentence with starfish?
“The adambulacral ossicles of the starfish.”
What does starfish mean?
Starfish means any of various echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: starfish (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use starfish in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/starfish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.