Pleuston
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The organisms that live floating at the surface of water. uncountable
"They^([Cnidarians]) are also the dominant organisms of the marine pleuston, providing food or substrate for a variety of other invertebrates living at the air-water interface[…]."
- 2 Plants that live floating at the surface of water. uncountable
Example
More examples"They^([Cnidarians]) are also the dominant organisms of the marine pleuston, providing food or substrate for a variety of other invertebrates living at the air-water interface[…]."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek πλεῦσις (pleûsis, “sailing”), from πλέω (pléō) + -on. The -t- is on analogy with the coordinate terms.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.