devilfish

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Compound of devil +‎ fish.

Noun[edit]

devilfish (plural devilfishes or devilfish)

  1. (dated) Any of several not closely related marine animals:
    1. The octopus.
      • 1899, Jose de Olivares, Our Islands and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil, St. Louis, M.O., New York, N.Y.: Thompson Pub. Co, page 470:
        The unattractive reptilian specimen in the man’s right hand is an octopus, or devilfish, which constitutes a favorite dish with the Asiatics of the islands.
      • 1913, Victor Ernest Shelford, Animal Communities in Temperate America, Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press, page 5:
        We have all heard of the octopus or devil-fish, with its long arms covered with powerful suckers, which is always waiting to seize the unsuspecting, choke and bite him, always grasping with another arm when the grip of one of them is loosened—suitable symbol of the trust.
      • 1922, Frederick O'Brien, Atolls of the Sun, Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart, pages 164–165:
        The devilfish felt the menace of his attitude, and his two longest tentacles began to writhe in the air, as he measured our distance.
      • 1951, Tracy I. Storer, General Zoology, New York, N.Y., Toronto, ON, London: McGraw Hill, page 435:
        The devilfishes, or octopuses, vary from 2 inches to 28 feet in spread. They have a flexible bulbous body without a shell and eight long sucker-bearing tentacles.
      • 1999, Jonathan Raban, Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings, New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, →ISBN, page 46:
        This bloody tinge drew the attention of a giant octopus, or "devilfish," who lived in the deep. Rising to the surface, "looking very white" (as a dead tentacle does, though a live octopus does not), it extended a single mammoth tentacle, encircled the fish camp, and swept it into the sea, gorging itself on the people and smashing their canoes.
    2. The giant squid or kraken.
      • 1880, James Henry Emerton, Life on the Seashore, Or, Animals of Our Coasts and Bay, Salem, M.A.: George A. Bates, page 94:
        It can easily be imagined that such creatures as these could drown a man, or upset a boat, and they have furnished material for many fabulous accounts of sea-serpents and devil-fishes.
      • 1901, H[ermann] Steuding, translated by Lionel D. Barnett, Greek and Roman mythology and Heroic Legend, London: Dent, page 53:
        At the bottom of the story of Skylla may lie a sailor's tale of the kraken or devil-fish, which sometimes grows to a gigantic size; Charybdis is obviously nothing but a dangerous whirlpool.
      • 1905, Charles Frederick Holder, Half Hours With the Lower Animals, New York, N.Y., Cincinnati, O.H., Chicago, I.L.: American Book Company, page 117:
        Devilfishes have been discovered in various seas, which weighed several hundred pounds, and whose length ranged from fifty to seventy or more feet.
      • 1909, Edwin J. Houston, At school in the Cannibal Islands, Boston, M.A., Chicago, I.L., St. Louis, M.O., Atlanta, G.A., Dallas, T.X.: Griffith & Rowland Press, page 139:
        "Doctor," inquired Charley, "would you call the kraken or devil-fish a legendary or real sea-serpent?"
      • 1913, “The Deep-Sea Kraken”, in Alfred Holman, editor, The Argonaut, volume 72, page 302:
        The Horror had besides eight or ten long tentacles studded with suckers like those of the giant squid or devil-fish. These measured at least thirty feet—thick as a man's thigh near the creature's body, fining down at their extremities like the tip of an elephant's trunk.
      • 1923, William Crowder, Dwellers of The Sea and Shore, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, page 198:
        Old books--many of them dating back to the last two centuries--contain pictures and descriptions of huge devilfishes overwhelming and capsizing ships with their tentacles.
      • 1939, Martha Black, Elizabeth Bailey Price, My Seventy Years, London [and others]: Thomas Nelson and Sons, page 108:
        The trail led through a scrub pine forest where we tripped over bare roots of trees that curled over and around rocks and boulders like great devilfishes.
        Possibly referring to octopuses.
      • 1965, Robert T. Orr, The Animal Kingdom, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, page 99:
        Today they are represented by only a few hundred species, but these include such fascinating animals as the octopus, the giant devilfish (or giant squid, which is the largest animal without a backbone), the paper nautilus, and the pearly nautilus.
    3. The gray whale, Eschrichtius robustus.
      • 1887, A. Howard Clark, “The American-Whale Fishery”, in Science, volume 9, number 217, New York, N.Y.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, page 323:
        The California gray whale, or devil-fish (Rhachianectes glaucus), is found only in the North Pacific, and is an object of pursuit by the shore stations established along that coast.
        Rhachianectes glaucus in an older scientific name for the same species.
      • 1972, David A. Henderson, Men & Whales at Scammon's Lagoon, Los Angeles, C.A.: Dawson's Book Shop, →ISBN, page 270:
        The Sarah Warren returned with 1,100 bbls. of "devil fish" oil and 60 bbls. of sperm oil, and her tender, the Nevada, returned with 74, bbls. of whale oil.
      • 1907, Daniel Logan, A History of the Hawaiian Islands, New York, N.Y., Chicago. I.L.: Lewis Publishing Company, page 231:
        Returning, arrived at Honolulu on April 6, with 330 barrels of devil fish oil. Discharged cargo and left again for the Arctic region the latter part of July, 1867, returning the latter part of October, with 850 barrels of oil.
      • 1916, Roy Chapman Andrews, Whale Hunting with Gun and Camera, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, page 197:
        Although twice the size of the killers and correspondingly strong, when one of the orcas appears the devilfish become terrified and either wildly dash for shore or turn belly up at the surface, with fins outspread, paralyzed by fright.
    4. The piranha.
      • 1860, “Paraguay”, in The New Monthly Magazine, volume 119, London: Chapman & Hall, page 461:
        The same carnivorous instincts are likewise attributed to the devil-fish, or piranha so common in the Rio San Francisco, and the terror of bathers.
      • 1869, Richard Francis Burton, Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil, volume 2, London: Tinsley Brothers, page 162:
        It is a kind of sturgeon, scaleless, spotted and marbled, flat-muzzled and whiskered, like the "cats" (Silurus), which drown the negro boys fishing in the Mississippi waters, and ugly as any "devil-fish".
      • 1885, John T. Taylor, The Apostles of Fylde Methodism, London: T. Woolmer, page 113:
        The body of her husband was rescued from the sharks and devil-fishes, and brought ashore for interment, with every mark of respect.
        Uncertain; may refer to a different species.
      • 1966, “Dire Tropical Fish Gets Into State's Courts”, in Daily Independent Journal, volume 105, number 259, →ISSN, page 2:
        A court will decide sometime this year whether the piranha—South America’s deadly "devil fish" — can be a welcomed guest in California homes.
    5. The anglerfish, Lophius piscatorius.
      • 1876 November 16, “City and Suburban News”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2:
        The American angler, or devil fish, which was placed In the Aquarium on Tuesday, was found dead in the tank yesterday morning. Mr. Coup, the manager, is making great effort to procure another specimen, as well as some strange fish from South America.
      • 1896, Arthur Watts, “Address to the Members of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club”, in Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, volume 13, London: Williams and Norgate, published 1900, page 179:
        The four successful trawls yielded us examples of the Angler or Devil-fish, Lophius piscatorius; […]
      • 1899, “A Review of the Medical Sciences”, in The Practitioner, volume 63, London: John Briggs, →ISSN, page 208:
        Vertical section through the freshly enucleated frozen eye of a devil-fish (Lophius piscatorius).
      • 2011, Insight Guides, Guernsey, London: APA Publications, →ISBN, page 81:
        Rock pools are a haven for crabs, crayfish, shrimp and devil fish.
    6. The suckermouth catfish, Hypostomus plecostomus (translating Spanish pez diablo).
      • [2018 July 2, Tara Duggan, “Bay Area men’s plan to market invasive fish from Mexico hits snag in U.S.”, in San Francisco Chronicle‎[1], archived from the original on 2022-12-05:
        In the rivers of southern Mexico, a lizard-like fish with armor for skin has taken over the habitat of the native fish like róbalo and mojarra. Locals call it the pez diablo, or devil fish, and long assumed it was poisonous.]
      • 2018 July 19, “Entrepreneurs hope to sell Mexico's 'devil fish' to Canadians as a sustainable snack”, in CBC News‎[2], archived from the original on 2023-02-03:
        But a U.S. law, aimed at protecting American catfish farmers from cheaper Asian imports, means there is effectively a ban on foreign catfish‚ including the suckermouth or devil fish, from entering the U.S.
      • 2022, Flores et. al, “Evaluation of a biocoagulant from devilfish invasive species for the removal of contaminants in ceramic industry wastewater”, in Scientific Reports, volume 12, London: Nature Portfolio, →DOI, →ISSN:
        Devilfish is an invasive species of the Loricariidae family native to South America of the Amazon basin, but it has been introduced in several countries, as in Mexico. Devilfish has become an environmental problem in the country, at least in the last 20 years.
      • 2022 December 3, Kevin Spear, “Climate change heats devil fish that possess St. Johns River”, in Orlando Sentinel‎[3], archived from the original on 2022-12-23:
        In another alarm of nature spiraling to hell in Florida, scientists suspect global warming has enabled devil fish to plague and ravage the St. Johns River.
    7. The manta ray; any ray in the genus Mobula.
      • 1893, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, American Big-game Hunting: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club, New York, N.Y.: Forest and Stream Publishing Co, page 323:
        Elliott's "South Carolina Field Sports" is a very interesting and entirely trustworthy record of the sporting side of existence on the old Southern plantations, and not only commemorates how the planters hunted bear, deer, fox, and wildcat in the cane-brakes, but also gives a unique description of harpooning the devil-fish in the warm Southern waters.
      • 1901, William Plane Pycraft, The Story Of Fish Life, London: George Newnes, page 173:
        The Tectospondyli contains those dog-fishes which have no anal fin, and the rays and devil-fishes.
      • 1905, A. S. J. Newberry, “The Song of the Spear”, in Forest and Stream, volume 44, number 15, New York, N.Y.: Forest and Stream Publishing Company, page 295:
        There the great ray, the devilfish, powerful, swift, mighty, tons in weight, spreads his huge black wings; […]
      • 1926, William Beebe, The Arcturus Adventure, New York, N.Y., London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 206:
        Indeed the same time-worn phrase if considered horizontally would be less than the actual fact if applied to some of the devilfish or giant rays which we saw.
      • 1951, “Woman Diverts Attention From Filming Undersea”, in The Atlanta Constitution, volume 84, number 148, page 12:
        Viennese marine biologist Han Haas lived for six months on an Arab fishing boat on the Red Sea in 120 degree heat. He bumped noses with sharks and deadly devil fish while he photographed the briny deep.
        Uncertain; however, Under the Red Sea (1951) was noted for its depictions of sharks and rays.
      • 1951, Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse: An Autobiography, Chicago, I.L.: Henry Regnery Company, published 1952, page 149:
        Thinking a whale had just sounded after hitting the water with its tail, I was about to turn away from it, when, like a great white owl, thirty feet across, and half as much from nose to tail, a gigantic eagle-ray or devil-fish, leaped silently out of the water, with its wings spread wide, planed for a short distance, and struck the water flat, with a similar detonation.
      • 2002, F. Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis, John B. Heiser, Vertebrate Life, 6th edition, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, →ISBN, page 127:
        The largest rays, like the largest sharks, are plankton strainers. Devilfishes or manta rays of the family Mobulidae are up to 6 meters in width.
      • 2004 October 31, Susan Enfield Esrey, “Far From the Bubblin' Crowd”, in The New York Times‎[4], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2016-04-03:
        These "devil fish" may have seemed terrifying then, but these days, the opportunity to swim with manta rays lures divers to Tobago, Trinidad's smaller, less-developed neighbor.
      1. (specifically) The devil ray, Mobula mobular.
    8. Certain fish in the genus Paraplesiops; see blue devilfish, Bleeker's devilfish.
      • 1989, Heinz-Gert de Couet, Andrew Green, The Manual of Underwater Photography, Viesbaden, Germany: Verlag Christa Hemmen, →ISBN, page 214:
        Devilfish are rather shy and difficult to approach. However, patience and perseverence[sic] usually pay off.
      • 1994, John R. Paxton, William N. Eschmeyer, Encyclopedia of Fishes, San Diego, C.A.: Academic Press, published 1995, →ISBN, page 185:
        Another closely related marine family, the Indo-Pacific Plesiopidae (roundheads), are well represented in Australian waters, with such familiar and brightly colored species as the hulafishes (Trachinops), devilfishes (Paraplesiops), and longfins (Plesiops).

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

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