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What is "flatfish"

Crossword clues for flatfish

flatfish
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
flatfish
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A young flatfish starts life swimming near the surface, and it is symmetrical and vertically flattened just like a herring.
▪ Bournemouth beaches produced odd flounder at night with pout, rockling and flatfish at Friars Cliff.
▪ Incidentally, some species of flatfish settle on the right side, others on the left, and others on either side.
▪ The greatest threat to humans comes from the stingrays, large flatfish that lie inconspicuously on the seabed in shallow waters.
▪ The whole skull of a bony flatfish retains the twisted and distorted evidence of its origins.
▪ There is not a smooth trajectory connecting these bony fish ancestors to flatfish lying on their belly.
▪ We see this process of moving round re-enacted in the development of every young bony flatfish.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Flatfish

Flatfish \Flat"fish`\, n. (Zo["o]l.) Any fish of the family Pleuronectid[ae]; esp., the winter flounder ( Pleuronectes Americanus). The flatfishes have the body flattened, swim on the side, and have eyes on one side, as the flounder, turbot, and halibut. See Flounder.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
flatfish

also flat-fish, 1710, from flat (adj.) + fish (n.). So called from the shape.

Wiktionary
flatfish

n. A fish of the order Pleuronectiformes, the adults of which have both eyes on one side and usually swim with the other side down, such as a flounder, a halibut, or a sole.

WordNet
flatfish

  1. n. sweet lean whitish flesh of any of numerous thin-bodied fish; usually served as thin fillets

  2. any of several families of fishes having flattened bodies that swim along the sea floor on one side of the body with both eyes on the upper side

  3. [also: flatfishes (pl)]

Wikipedia
Flatfish

A flatfish is a member of the order Pleuronectiformes of ray-finned demersal fishes, also called the Heterosomata, sometimes classified as a suborder of Perciformes. In many species, both eyes lie on one side of the head, one or the other migrating through and around the head during development. Some species face their left sides upward, some face their right sides upward, and others face either side upward.

Many important food fish are in this order, including the flounders, soles, turbot, plaice, and halibut. Some flatfish can actively camouflage themselves on the ocean floor.

Flatfish (album)

Flatfish is the second album, and debut studio recording, by Anglo-Irish celtic music group Flook, released in 1999 on Flatfish Records.

Usage examples of "flatfish".

Flounders and other flatfish on Earth start life with the usual bilateral symmetry, with an eye on either side, like free-swimming fish.

Although the pressure at that depth was nearly 17,000 pounds per square inch, they noticed with surprise that they disturbed a bottom-dwelling flatfish just as they touched down.

If Antonia had looked, she would have seen not one bird flying in the sky, and if she had gone down to the sea, she would have seen flatfish swimming near the surface, and the other fish leaping as if they now wished to be birds and to swim in air, whilst many others pre-emptively turned turtle, and died.