Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various colonial corals of the order Gorgonacea (or Alcyonacea), having a usually branched skeleton of horny material and polyps with eight tentacles, and including the sea fans, sea feathers, and red corals.
from The Century Dictionary.
- See
gorgonean . - Of or pertaining to Gorgonia.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Pertaining to, or resembling, a Gorgon; terrifying into stone; terrific.
- adjective (Zoöl.) Pertaining to the Gorgoniacea.
- noun (Zoöl.) One of the Gorgoniacea.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biology Any
coral of the order Gorgonacea. - adjective Of or relating to the Gorgons.
- adjective Terrible or repulsive.
- adjective biology Of or relating to any
coral of the order Gorgonacea.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun corals having a horny or calcareous branching skeleton
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Reef gardens are embellished with scarlet and orange staircase sponges and feathery gorgonian fans with their bright yellow branches.
Brenda Peterson: Gulf Oil Spill Meets Dead Zone: What Lies Beneath 2010
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The red gorgonian, Paragorgia arborea, occurs on these reefs.
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Sponges make up 70% of their diet with the rest of their diet consisting of gorgonian polyps, other invertebrates, and algae.
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French Angelfish (Pomacanthus paru) forage in a similar manner, but they consume less gorgonian polyps and algae.
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“Growth and composition of high-Mg calcite in the skeleton of a Bermudian gorgonian Plexaurella dichotoma: Potential for paleothermometry”
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A potentially-important recent advance is the use of SIMS secondary-ion mass spectrometry on gorgonian corals—which live at all depths, from the poles to the equator.
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Because I'm supposed to be studying venoms, peptdies, and antifeedants in gorgonian corals at the moment, and I am finding it rather difficult to concentrate, I ask all of you this burning question:
Coffee. Sigh mariness 2005
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So tonight we settled in happily expecting to learn about shark repellents made by the Pacific sole -- a long and fascinating subject if you are a Pacific sole, and rather dull if you're aren't -- only to be energized by the professor's discussion of how he had isolated a particular toxin from a gorgonian those pretty, wavy soft corals that you see in various marine pictures.
Mornings. Grumble mariness 2005
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Small gorgonian fans, yellow feather stars and red soft corals cling to the thick roots.
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Darryl Leniuk 2011
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Antibacterial and antilarval compounds from marine gorgonian-associated bacterium
Naturejobs - All Jobs Cheng-Hai Gao 2010
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