Cirrip

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small marine crustacean that attaches permanently to surfaces such as rocks, ships, and whales ; a sessile organism in the subclass Cirripedia characterized by calcareous plates and feathery appendages used for filter feeding ; members of a group of barnacles known for their hard shells and sedentary lifestyle commonly found in intertidal zones
2. A tiny sea creature that fixes itself to submerged objects and feeds by filtering water ; an invertebrate belonging to a subclass that forms hard, overlapping plates and uses featherlike limbs for feeding ; barnacle species recognized for their rigid exoskeletons and immobile habits on coastal substrates
3. A marine animal that remains fixed in place on hard surfaces, encased in a shell made of several plates, and uses specialized appendages to strain plankton from the water ; a filter-feeding crustacean classified under the subclass Cirripedia with a protective exterior ; an organism commonly called barnacle, noted for its calcareous covering and stationary nature in ocean habitats

Etymology: "Cirrip" appears to be a clipped form of "cirriped" or "cirripede," and the older word is the more useful key to its meaning. Both come from Modern Latin "Cirripedia," which joins Latin "cirrus," meaning a curl or tuft, with "pes," meaning foot. The name describes the barnacle's feeding apparatus: the feathery appendages it extends from its shell are modified legs, which it sweeps through the water to catch food. The ancestry is Latin, but the scientific term itself is a 19th-century coinage by naturalists, not an ancient one. The best-known student of these animals was Charles Darwin, who spent roughly eight years, from 1846 to 1854, dissecting and classifying barnacles. His resulting monographs were far from a sideline. They gave him the detailed anatomical knowledge that shaped his thinking about variation in living organisms.

Synonyms: barnacle