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
Support
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Examples
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The first larval stage is called a zoea and, as a zoea, they will go through seven molts.
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The photo shows the zoea, which represents the offshore larval stage
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Thus Fritz Müller has made the remarkable discovery that certain shrimp-like crustaceans (allied to Penus) 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.
wiredweird commented on the word zoea
Four letters, three syllables, and starts with a consonant. Does anyone know any other words like that?
September 30, 2007
seanahan commented on the word zoea
There's queue.
September 30, 2007
uselessness commented on the word zoea
How do you get three syllables out of that? I get, um, one.
September 30, 2007
reesetee commented on the word zoea
Peony comes close, but it's five letters. :-)
September 30, 2007
seanahan commented on the word zoea
Oh, we were looking for three syllables, my bad.
September 30, 2007