blanket octopus

English

Noun

blanket octopus (plural blanket octopuses or (nonstandard) blanket octopusses or (nonstandard) blanket octopi or (nonstandard) blanket octopii or (rare) blanket octopodes or (rare, nonstandard) blanket octopus)

  1. Any of four species of pelagic octopus of the genus Tremoctopus, found in tropical and subtropical oceans.
    • 2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 229:
      One species, the Blanket octopus, has the most extreme divergence in size between the two sexes in a single species of any animal: females weigh 10,000 times as much as males.
    • 2018 March 27, Mark Carnall, The Guardian‎[1]:
      Blanket octopuses appear to be immune or resistant to Portugese[sic] man 'o' war stings and have even been observed wielding the stinging tentacles they’ve detached as a weapon.
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