Word.ws English Dictionary

seston

seston noun: all particulate matter suspended in bodies of water such as lakes and seas, including plankton, organic detritus, and inorganic material.

Noun

seston (countable and uncountable, plural sestons)

  1. All particulate matter suspended in bodies of water such as lakes and seas, including plankton, organic detritus, and inorganic material.
    • Depending on mesh size and the area of investigation, net samples contain a variable mixture called seston. […] Nowadays plankton stands for the living part of seston, detritus for dead organic and inorganic particles.2000, L. Postel, H. Fock, W. Hagen, “Biomass and abundance”, in R[oger] P. Harris, P[eter] H. Wiebe, J[urgen] Lenz, H[ein-]R[une] Skjoldal, M[ark] Huntley, editors, ICES Zooplankton Methodology...

Forms of seston

pluralsestons

Origin of seston

From German Seston, by surface analysis, Ancient Greek σηστός (sēstós, “sifter”, verbal adjective of σήθω (sḗthō, “I strain, filter”)) + -on. Compare plankton.

Words formed from seston

Questions about seston

What does seston mean?
Seston means all particulate matter suspended in bodies of water such as lakes and seas, including plankton, organic detritus, and inorganic material.
What part of speech is seston?
Seston is a noun.
What is the plural of seston?
The plural of seston is sestons.

Words near seston in the dictionary

  1. Sesto San Giovanni
  2. sestole
  3. sestoles
  4. sestolet
  5. sestolets
  6. seston
  7. sestonic
  8. sestons
  9. Sestos
  10. sestrin
  11. sestrins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seston (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: “seston.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seston. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.