Definitions

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

  • noun A larval form of crabs and certain other decapod crustaceans, characterized by thoracic appendages used for swimming and often one or more spines on the carapace.

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

  • noun Alternative spelling of zoaea.

Etymologies

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

[New Latin, from Greek zōē, life; see azo–.]

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Examples

  • The first larval stage is called a zoea and, as a zoea, they will go through seven molts.

    Homepage 2010

  • The photo shows the zoea, which represents the offshore larval stage

    UnderwaterTimes.com News of the Underwater World 2010

  • Thus Fritz Müller has made the remarkable discovery that certain shrimp-like crustaceans (allied to Penœus) first appear under the simple nauplius-form, and after passing through two or more zoea-stages, and then through the mysis-stage, finally acquire their mature structure: now in the whole great malacostracan order, to which these crustaceans belong, no other member is as yet known to be first developed under the nauplius-form, though many appear as zoeas; nevertheless Müller assigns reasons for his belief, that if there had been no suppression of development, all these crustaceans would have appeared as nauplii.

    XIV. Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology-Embryology-Rudimentary Organs. Development and Embryology 1909

Comments

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  • Four letters, three syllables, and starts with a consonant. Does anyone know any other words like that?

    September 30, 2007

  • There's queue.

    September 30, 2007

  • How do you get three syllables out of that? I get, um, one.

    September 30, 2007

  • Peony comes close, but it's five letters. :-)

    September 30, 2007

  • Oh, we were looking for three syllables, my bad.

    September 30, 2007