Pleopod

//ˈpliːəˌpɒd// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One of the abdominal legs of a crustacean.

    "In decapods such as lobsters, pleopods are legs mainly used for swimming but sometimes used for brooding eggs or catching food. In some species certain pleopods of an animal may have been adapted to special functions such as reproduction."

  2. 2
    one of the paired abdominal appendages of certain aquatic crustaceans that function primarily for carrying the eggs in females and are usually adapted for swimming wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
swimmeretswimmeret

Example

More examples

"In decapods such as lobsters, pleopods are legs mainly used for swimming but sometimes used for brooding eggs or catching food. In some species certain pleopods of an animal may have been adapted to special functions such as reproduction."

Etymology

From pleon (“the abdomen of a crustacean”) + -pod (“foot”).

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