| / English Dictionary |
AMPHIBIAN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Cold-blooded vertebrate typically living on land but breeding in water; aquatic larvae undergo metamorphosis into adult form
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("amphibian" is a kind of...):
craniate; vertebrate (animals having a bony or cartilaginous skeleton with a segmented spinal column and a large brain enclosed in a skull or cranium)
Meronyms (parts of "amphibian"):
lateral line; lateral line organ (sense organs of fish and amphibians; believed to detect pressure changes in the water)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "amphibian"):
Hynerpeton bassetti (fossil amphibian of the Devonian having well-developed forelimbs; found in Pennsylvania)
Ichyostega (early tetrapod amphibian found in Greenland)
caudate; urodele (amphibians that resemble lizards)
salamander (any of various typically terrestrial amphibians that resemble lizards and that return to water only to breed)
anuran; batrachian; frog; salientian; toad; toad frog (any of various tailless stout-bodied amphibians with long hind limbs for leaping; semiaquatic and terrestrial species)
blindworm; caecilian (any of the small slender limbless burrowing wormlike amphibians of the order Gymnophiona; inhabit moist soil in tropical regions)
labyrinthodont (an amphibian of the superorder Labyrinthodontia)
Holonyms ("amphibian" is a member of...):
amphibia; class Amphibia (the class of vertebrates that live on land but breed in water; frogs; toads; newts; salamanders; caecilians)
Derivation:
amphibian (relating to or characteristic of animals of the class Amphibia)
Sense 2
Meaning:
An airplane designed to take off and land on water
Synonyms:
amphibian; amphibious aircraft
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("amphibian" is a kind of...):
aeroplane; airplane; plane (an aircraft that has a fixed wing and is powered by propellers or jets)
Meronyms (parts of "amphibian"):
pontoon (a float supporting a seaplane)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A flat-bottomed motor vehicle that can travel on land or water
Synonyms:
amphibian; amphibious vehicle
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("amphibian" is a kind of...):
automotive vehicle; motor vehicle (a self-propelled wheeled vehicle that does not run on rails)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "amphibian"):
marsh buggy; swamp buggy (an amphibious vehicle typically having four-wheel drive and a raised body)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Relating to or characteristic of animals of the class Amphibia
Synonyms:
amphibian; amphibious
Classified under:
Relational adjectives (pertainyms)
Pertainym:
amphibia (the class of vertebrates that live on land but breed in water; frogs; toads; newts; salamanders; caecilians)
Derivation:
amphibian (cold-blooded vertebrate typically living on land but breeding in water; aquatic larvae undergo metamorphosis into adult form)
Context examples:
Birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals have evolved diverse lung structures; air flows through them in complicated ways.
(Following the lizard lung labyrinth, National Science Foundation)
There are 216 new species of plants, 93 fishes, 32 amphibians, 19 reptiles, one bird, 20 mammals (two of them fossils).
(Report unveils 381 new plant and animal species in Amazon, Agência Brasil)
Although somatic cell nuclear transfer was used successfully in amphibians as early as 1952, getting it to work in mammals took much longer.
(Healthy cloned monkeys born in Shanghai, Wikinews)
Emerging fungal pathogens pose a greater threat to biodiversity than any other parasitic group, scientists say, causing population declines of amphibians, bats, corals, bees and snakes.
(Amphibians can acquire resistance to deadly fungus, NSF)
E. hoshinae is an occasional opportunist pathogen in humans and a pathogen in reptiles and amphibians.
(Edwardsiella hoshinae, NCI Thesaurus)
Pigmented animal hemisphere of the amphibian blastula.
(Animal Cap, NCI Thesaurus)
The late Alan J. Charig, then-curator of fossil reptiles, amphibians and birds at the Natural History Museum of London, was the first to study those original specimens in the 1950s.
(Scientists discover fossil of dinosaur ancestor with surprising croc-like appearance, NSF)
An era of geological history which extends from the beginning of the Cambrian to the close of the Permian and is marked by the culmination of nearly all classes of invertebrates except the insects and in the later epochs of which seed-bearing plants, amphibians, and reptiles first appeared.
(Paleozoic, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)
The State Environment Secretariat (SEMA) has published a list of 331 species of amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles, continental invertebrates, fish, marine invertebrates, and the so-called social interest species—those exploited by traditional communities for sustainable use or subsistence.
(Over 300 animal species threatened in Bahia, Agência Brasil)
Damp and soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable sojourning-place.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
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