sea toad

English

Noun

sea toad (plural sea toads) (chiefly archaic and or dialectal)

  1. Any marine animal of toad-like appearance, such as sculpins (Cottidae spp.), toadfish, anglerfish (Lophiiformes spp.), frogfish (Antennarius spp.), Antarctic ascidian (Cnemidocarpa verrucosa), Australian spider crabs (Gonatorhynchus tumidus), and pufferfish.
    • 1880, JG Wood, The fresh and salt-water aquarium:
      At Plate IV. fig. 2, may be seen a figure of another species, the Harper Crab, or Sea Toad (Hyas araneus). As its latter name implies, this creature belongs to the group known as Spider Crabs.
    • 1910, F. K. Noyes, “Fishes that Fish”, in The Volta Review, page 174:
      The advantage which the sea-toad derives from standing on this head comes from the fact that it has its mouth nearest to the fish it wishes to catch. By opening its mouth very wide and sucking in the water about it, the Antennarius is often able to catch small fish in a current which carries them directly into its maw […] .
    • 2000, Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, page 110:
      I recognized two types: the crapaud du mer, or sea toad (Sphoeroides testudineus L., Sphoeroides spengleri Bloch), and the poisson fufu, or fufu fish (Diodon hystrix L., Diodon holacanthus L.)
    • 2001, R Flecha, J Gómez, L Puigvert, “Chapter 8: Interactionism”, in Counterpoints, volume 250, pages 57–61:
      For instance, a few decades ago, monkfish was not valued in some areas, where it was called sea toad and sold for very cheap prices.
    • 2017, R Vianello, “The ransom of mussels in the lagoon of Venice: when the louses become" black gold".”, in International Review of Social Research:
      Formerly, they could also accommodate parts considered as waste, such as heads of sea-toad (Lophius piscatorius, L.) to do soaps.
    • 2023, G DeBucquet, “Consumer Perceptions of “Fish” Food”, in Current Challenges for the Aquatic Products:
      Aristotle used vernacular names or names borrowed from terrestrial animals, such as mule, wolf or “sea toad”
  2. Any fish of family Chaunacidae (frogmouths, coffinfishes).
    • 1998, Edith H. Chave, ‎Alexander Malahoff, In Deeper Waters: Photographic Studies of Hawaiian Deep-Sea Habitats and Life-Forms, page 75:
      Figure 200. Orange sea toad Chaunax fimbriatus on sediment and basalt
    • 2004, M Gianni, High seas bottom trawl fisheries and their impacts on the biodiversity of vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems: options for international action:
      A rare anglerfish or sea toad (Chaunacidae: Bathychaunax coloratus), measuring 20.5 cm in total length […] .
    • 2011, Nobuhiro Saito, Tomomi Saito, “New record of Aegiochus spongiophila (Semper) (Isopoda: Aegidae), inhabiting the hexactinellid sponge Euplectella oweni Herklots & Marshall from off Makurazaki, southern Kyushu, Japan”, in Crustacean Research, volume 40, pages 33-40:
      The aegid isopod Aegiochus spongiophila (Semper, 1867) was recorded from Japanese waters for the first time. The specimens were collected from off Makurazaki, southern Kyushu, Japan, mainly inhabiting the cavity of the hexactinellid sponge Euplectella oweni Herklots & Marshall, 1868. One specimen of A. spongiophila was found in the gill cavity of the sea toad Chaunax abei Le Danois, 1978.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “sea toad”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Derived terms

References

  • “sea toad”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
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