# jellyfish

Pronunciation: say "JEL-ee-fish" /ˈd͡ʒɛliˌfɪʃ/

## Noun

1. A nearly transparent aquatic animal with a jellylike appearance, especially one of the larger species once classed among the acalephs.
   - Simple: A soft, see-through sea animal with a body like jelly and no bones.
   - _A glowing jellyfish pulsed slowly through the deep water beyond the reef._
   - _The current carried a translucent jellyfish toward the crowded beach._
2. Any of various stinging cnidarians of the subphylum Medusozoa, including box jellyfish, true jellyfish, stalked jellyfish, and certain hydrozoans.
   - Simple: A soft sea animal that stings, with an umbrella-shaped body and long trailing tentacles.
   - _Marine biologists classify the jellyfish among the cnidarians, not among true fish._
   - _A jellyfish has no brain, yet it hunts and stings prey with remarkable efficiency._
3. A comb jelly, a transparent marine animal of the phylum Ctenophora that swims using rows of beating cilia.
   - Simple: A clear sea animal that swims using rows of tiny beating combs along its body.
   - _The rainbow shimmer along that jellyfish comes from light scattering off its beating rows of cilia._
   - _A drifting jellyfish trapped tiny plankton on sticky cells rather than stunning them with venom._
4. The medusa phase of a medusozoan cnidarian (the mature, free-swimming bell) rather than an earlier life stage such as the polyp.
   - Simple: The grown-up, free-swimming stage of the sea animal, not its younger early stage.
   - _Only after the polyp releases it does the young jellyfish pulse away into open water._
   - _Researchers tracked how quickly each released jellyfish reached its full adult size._
5. A sudoku solving technique in which the possible cells for a digit fall within exactly four rows and four columns, allowing that digit to be eliminated as a candidate elsewhere in the grid.
   - Simple: A sudoku trick where a digit fits in only four rows and four columns, letting you cross it out elsewhere.
   - _He paused mid-grid, traced a jellyfish through four rows, and erased a cluster of penciled candidates._
   - _A clean jellyfish on the fives finally unlocked the rest of the puzzle._

## Origin

A compound of jelly + fish, naming an aquatic (fish-like) creature that is gelatinous, or jelly-like. Despite the name, jellyfish are not biologically classified as fish.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/jellyfish (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).