English

Noun

starfish ‎(plural starfishes or starfish)

1. Any of various asteroids or other echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach.
2. (vulgar, slang, usually in translations of Japanese pornography) an anus. See also chocolate starfish.
3. (obsolete) Any many-armed or tentacled sea invertebrate, whether cnidarian, echinoderm, or cephalopod.
   • 1755, Erik Pontoppidan, trans. Isaac Kimbler, Explanation of the Plate of Uncommon Star Fish, Extracted from the Natural History of Norway

     But the largest of the star-fish kind is that sea monster called kruken, kraken or krabben. [...] As this enormous sea-animal in all probability may be reckoned of the polype, or of the star-fish, kind, it seems that the parts which are seen rising at its pleasure, and are called arms, are properly the tentacula, or feeding instruments, called horns as well as arms.

Synonyms

• (various echinoderms): sea star, asteroid

Translations

Verb

starfish ‎(third-person singular simple present starfishes, present participle starfishing, simple past and past participle starfished)

1. (intransitive) To assume a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
   • 1981, Kit Reed, Magic Time (page 229)

     "Oh you damn bastard, why won't you let anybody love you," and then, before I could stop her, she threw herself between us and the glowing suitcase, starfishing in the blaze of light as he blew up.

2. (transitive) To form into a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
   • 2011, Polly Williams, It Happened One Summer

     The sea roared up her nostrils, tunnelled into her ears, and flung her forward, then back, the current pulling her fingers apart, starfishing her hands.

See also

• Starfish site