Belemnite
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any member of the extinct order †Belemnitida of Mesozoic marine cephalopods, very similar in many ways to the modern squid and closely related to the modern cuttlefish.
"In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago."
- 2 a conical calcareous fossil tapering to a point at one end and with a conical cavity at the other end containing (when unbroken) a small chambered phragmocone from the shell of any of numerous extinct cephalopods of the family Belemnitidae wordnet
Example
More examples"In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek βέλεμνον (bélemnon, “dart, arrow”) + -ite.
Related phrases
More for "belemnite"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.