Catadromous

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Living in fresh water as an adult, but breeding in the sea.

    "Bird migration routes favor marshes and river valleys, as do, more obviously, the movement of anadromous salmon and, the mirror image, catadromous eels, to mention only two of the numerous migrating fish species."

  2. 2
    Of a fern in which the first veins in a frond segment are produced towards the base of the frond.
Adjective
  1. 1
    migrating from fresh water to the sea to spawn wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
oceanodromous

Example

More examples

"Bird migration routes favor marshes and river valleys, as do, more obviously, the movement of anadromous salmon and, the mirror image, catadromous eels, to mention only two of the numerous migrating fish species."

Etymology

From cata- + -dromous, by analogy with anadromous. Compare catanadromous.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.