starfish

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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. (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.

3. (slang) A woman who reluctantly takes part in sexual intercourse, and lays on her back while spreading her limbs.
4. (vulgar, slang, usually in translations of Japanese pornography) The anus.

   Synonyms: chocolate starfish

Synonyms

• (various echinoderms) sea star, asteroid
• (inactive sexual partner) cold fish, dead fish

Translations

• French: étoile de mer
• German: Seestern
• Italian: stella di mare, stella marina
• Portuguese: estrela-do-mar
• Russian: морска́я звезда́
• Spanish: estrella de mar

Verb

starfish (starfishes, present participle starfishing; 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.

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