Definitions

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

  • noun Any of numerous often brightly colored marine eels of the family Muraenidae, having a large mouth with sharp teeth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of many apodal eellike fishes of the family Murænidæ, and especially of the genus Muræna, of which there are several subdivisions, as Sidera. The spotted moray is M. (Sidera) moringa, of the tropical Atlantic, everywhere with innumerable small dark spots in a fine network of the whitish ground-color. Several other morays occur on the southern Atlantic coast of the United States, and M. mordax is a Californian moray attaining a length of 5 feet.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A muræna.

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

  • noun Any of the large cosmopolitan carnivorous eels of the family Muraenidae.

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

  • noun family of brightly colored voracious eels of warm coastal waters; generally nonaggressive to humans but larger species are dangerous if provoked

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Portuguese moréia, from Latin mūrēna, from Greek mūraina, from mūros, a kind of eel.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Portuguese moreia, from Latin muraena ("sea eel, lamprey"), from Ancient Greek σμυραινα (smyraina), from σμυρος (smyros, "sea eel").

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Examples

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  • That's a moray!

    April 30, 2009