Definitions

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

  • noun A larval mollusk that is free-swimming and has a velum.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which bears a velum; in Mollusca, specifically, the veligerous stage of the embryo, or the embryo in that stage, when it has a ciliated swimmingmembrane or velum (see velum, 3, and typembryo).

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any larval gastropod or bivalve mollusk in the stage when it is furnished with one or two ciliated membranes for swimming.

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

  • noun zoology The planktonic larva of many kinds of marine and freshwater gastropod molluscs, as well as most bivalve molluscs.

Etymologies

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

[New Latin vēliger : Latin vēlum, velum; see velum + Latin gerere, to bear.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin velum a veil + gerere bear.

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