water bear

water bear noun: a member of the animal phylum Tardigrada.

Image: Willow Gabriel, Goldstein Lab, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

water bear (plural water bears)

நீர் நுண்மா

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water bear in Tagalog: tardigrado
water bear in Arabic: بَطِيء الخَطْو baṭīʔ al-ḵaṭw, بَطِيء المِشْيَة baṭīʔ al-mišya, تارْدِيجْرادا tārdīgrāda, دُبّ المَاء dubb al-māʔ
water bear in Malay: beruang air, tardigrada
water bear in Thai: หมีน้ำ mĕe náam
water bear in Vietnamese: gấu nước

plural	water bears

Calque of German Wasserbär, used to describe these animals by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773. Equivalent to water + bear.

What does water bear mean?: Water bear means a member of the animal phylum Tardigrada.
What is water bear in Hindi?: Water bear in Hindi is टार्डीग्रेड (ṭārḍīgreḍ). See Water bear meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is water bear?: Water bear is a noun.
What is the plural of water bear?: The plural of water bear is water bears.

Adapted from Wiktionary: water bear (page history and authors); water bear (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-water bear.wav.

Cite this entry: “water bear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/water_bear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.