Coralline
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any calcareous species of red algae of the family Corallinaceae.
- 2 An animal that resembles such a coral.
- 1 Of, relating to or pertaining to or resembling red algae of the family Corallinaceae.
"Drifting idly around a broad oceanic arc, the bottle collides softly with tens of thousands of pelagic plastics all colonized by hard-shelled organisms, including barnacles, coralline algae, foraminifera and bivalve molluscs."
- 2 Of, pertaining to, or resembling the material coral.
"The pigeon rocked itself backwards and forwards on the bough, swelling out its breast feathers and laying its coralline beak upon them."
- 3 Describing rock formed from the skeletons of such algae.
Example
More examples"Drifting idly around a broad oceanic arc, the bottle collides softly with tens of thousands of pelagic plastics all colonized by hard-shelled organisms, including barnacles, coralline algae, foraminifera and bivalve molluscs."
Etymology
From French corallin, from Latin corallinus, from corallium (“coral”), via Greek probably of Semitic origin. The taxonomic sense is a semantic loan from translingual Corallina and related terms. By surface analysis, coral + -ine.
Related phrases
More for "coralline"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.