Word.ws English Dictionary

starfishing

starfishing is the present participle and gerund of starfish.

Meaning of starfish

Verb

starfish (third-person singular simple present starfishes, present participle starfishing, simple past and past participle starfished)

  1. (intransitive) To 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
    1. (intransitive) While floating on water
  2. (transitive) To 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

See all 7 meanings of starfish

Questions about starfishing

What is starfishing the present participle and gerund of?
Starfishing is the present participle and gerund of starfish.

Words near starfishing in the dictionary

  1. starfish wasting disease
  2. starfish-associated densovirus
  3. starfish-associated densoviruses
  4. starfished
  5. starfishes
  6. starfishing
  7. starfishlike
  8. starfleet
  9. starfleets
  10. starflower
  11. starflowers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: starfishing (page history and authors); starfish (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: “starfishing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/starfishing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.