Word.ws English Dictionary

testacea

testacea noun: any of various shellfish, especially those of the obsolete orders Vermes or Acephala, or the suborder Thecosomata.

Noun (1)

testacea pl (plural only)

  1. (obsolete, plural, plural-only) Any of various shellfish, especially those of the obsolete orders Vermes or Acephala, or the suborder Thecosomata.
    • ANAIMONA, Aquatilia Exanguia, Bloodless Fishes, are divided into Mollia Soft Fishes without Shells; Crustata, those that are covered with thin pliant Shells; and Testacea, those which have thick, hard brittle Shells.1722, John Jones (tr.), Oppian's Halieuticks of the Nature of Fishes and Fishing of the Ancients, page 231
    • The echinite family […] may be deemed characteristic of the chalk formation, affording of itself as many shells as the other testacea do.1829, Andrew Ure, A New System of Geology, page 285

Noun (2)

testacea (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete, rare) A testaceous substance, something made of shell or shell-like material.

Origin of testacea

From Latin testāceus (“covered with a shell”).

Words formed from testacea

Questions about testacea

What does testacea mean?
Testacea means any of various shellfish, especially those of the obsolete orders Vermes or Acephala, or the suborder Thecosomata.
What part of speech is testacea?
Testacea is a noun.

Words near testacea in the dictionary

  1. test-tubes
  2. testa
  3. testabilities
  4. testability
  5. testable
  6. testacea
  7. testacean
  8. testaceans
  9. testacellid
  10. testacellids
  11. testaceology

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: testacea (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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