Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various marine fishes of the order Lophiiformes, having a long dorsal fin ray that is suspended over the mouth and serves as a lure to attract prey.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any fish of the bony fish order Lophiiformes. These fish use an outgrowth that can be wiggled so as to resemble a prey animal to lure and catch their prey.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun fishes having large mouths with a wormlike filament attached for luring prey

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Name an ingredient, from anglerfish to zucchini, and it probably begins with a seed.

    THE ARROWS COOKBOOK Clark Frasier 2003

  • Players bought a translucent anglerfish at six times the rate of other sea creatures, using an imaginary currency people get by playing the game.

    Virtual Products, Real Profits Nick Wingfield 2011

  • Like other frogfish — a subset of anglerfish — H. psychedelica has leglike fins on both sides of its body.

    Boing Boing 2009

  • When the male anglerfish reaches maturity his digestive system shuts down, rendering him unable to feed.

    Love and other animals 2011

  • Anyway, the book not only contains full page pictures of the cardboard cut-outs and foam-rubber sculptures that are uniquely Green Porno, and educational and entertaining phrases such as If I were a male anglerfish I would look sooooo different than the female.

    Green Porno « Biodork 2010

  • For a male anglerfish, an increasing reliance on the female results in his organs becoming unnecessary, and he begins to disintegrate.

    Love and other animals 2011

  • Identities merge, dependency builds, and before you realise it, an anglerfish you've become.

    Love and other animals 2011

  • "Eventually the male becomes nothing but a lump on the female's side – an unconscious bulge where once swam an individual": the Blackdevil anglerfish.

    Love and other animals 2011

  • Just like the anglerfish, in finding our missing piece, some of us lose a piece we already had.

    Love and other animals 2011

  • The male anglerfish has no independent existence, but lives parasitically attached to the female.

    Mark C. Miller: Holy Mackerel! Amazing Fish Facts 2010

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