Word of the Day:
nautilus
What It Means
A marine mollusc, of the family Nautilidae native to the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean, which has tentacles and a spiral shell with a series of air-filled chambers, of which Nautilus is the type genus.
A kind of diving bell that sinks or rises by means of compressed air.
A paper nautilus (actually an octopus).
Nautilus in Context
“Nautilidan cephalopods, represented today by the six living species of nautilus are thought to have diverged from other nautiloids in the Devonian period.”
Did You Know?
From Latin nautilus, from Ancient Greek ναυτίλος (nautílos, “paper nautilus, sailor”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nautilus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “nautilus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nautilus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
