Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One of the leading divisions of invertebrated animals; an extensive series of invertebrates whose bodies are soft, without any jointed legs, and commonly covered with a hard shell in one, two, or more pieces, and whose principal parts are neither segmented into a series of longitudinal rings, as in insects, crustaceans, and worms, nor radiately arranged, as in echinoderms; the mollusks, as the univalve or bivalve shell-fish of ordinary language.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- proper noun plural (Zoöl.) One of the grand divisions of the animal kingdom, a phylum including the classes Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda, and Pelecyopoda (syn. Bivalvia, formerly called Lamellibranchiata, or Conchifera). These animals have an unsegmented bilateral body, with most of the organs and parts paired, but not repeated longitudinally. Most of them develop a mantle, which incloses either a branchial or a pulmonary cavity. They are generally more or less covered and protected by a calcareous shell, which may be univalve, bivalve, or multivalve.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun gastropods; bivalves; cephalopods; chitons
Etymologies
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Examples
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In the animal kingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, which, however, only shews itself there in their soft and sluggish character, and their being very generally edible.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836
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All kinds of shell-fish are called "mollusca," have white blood, and breathe not only in the water, but also in the air.
Lord Dolphin Harriet A. Cheever
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I should be throwing up or running or studying the internal lay of crayfish and mollusca.
Nutrition 2010
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Conchology 38:607, 2005 included T. subcylindrica in his list of non-marine mollusca of Britain and Ireland.
Snails of the sea shore: neither aquatic nor terrestrial AYDIN 2008
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Conchology 38:607, 2005 included T. subcylindrica in his list of non-marine mollusca of Britain and Ireland.
Archive 2008-06-01 AYDIN 2008
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Bulletin No. 1 featured an article by Moore and Butler titled Land and fresh water mollusca observed in Franklin County, Indiana.
Bulletin of the Brookville Society of Natural History AYDIN 2007
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British conchology, or An account of the mollusca which now inhabit the British Isles and the surrounding seas.
Not so modern conchology, but fully digitized nevertheless AYDIN 2007
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Bulletin No. 1 featured an article by Moore and Butler titled Land and fresh water mollusca observed in Franklin County, Indiana.
Archive 2007-03-01 AYDIN 2007
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I think, considering the organization of these mollusca and crustacea, and looking at their very complex nature, that it does indeed require a very strong imagination to conceive that these were the first created of all living things.
Essays 2007
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British conchology, or An account of the mollusca which now inhabit the British Isles and the surrounding seas.
Archive 2007-02-01 AYDIN 2007
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