Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The typical genus of the family Porpitidæ.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) A genus of bright-colored Siphonophora found floating in the warmer parts of the ocean. The individuals are round and disk-shaped, with a large zooid in the center of the under side, surrounded by smaller nutritive and reproductive zooids, and by slender dactylozooids near the margin. The disk contains a central float, or pneumatocyst.

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

  • noun zoology A marine organism, Porpita porpita, the blue button.

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  • "A kind of pelagic colonial hydroid consisting of a central gastrozooid surrounded by gonozooids and defensive polyps, all hanging from a flattened, circular, chitinous float; a fossil of such a hydroid (now rare). Also (in form Porpita): the genus of chondrophores (family Porpitidae) to which these hydroids belong." (OED)

    September 12, 2008

  • March 3, 2011