AMPHIBIAN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Amphibian

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/æmfˈɪbiən/ Listen

Amphibian

noun

A flat-bottomed motor vehicle that can travel on land or water. Synonym: amphibious vehicle.

An airplane designed to take off and land on water. Synonym: amphibious aircraft.

Cold-blooded vertebrate typically living on land but breeding in water; aquatic larvae undergo metamorphosis into adult form.

adjective

Relating to or characteristic of animals of the class Amphibia. Synonym: amphibious.

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Etymology of 'Amphibian'

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amphibian family

amphibian genus

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"Amphibian" Quotes from Famous Books

... hinder him from plunging back at any moment into the shining Elysian waters from which he will have just emerged. I see him skim lightly away into that element. On the strand is sitting a man of noble and furrowed brow. It is Mazzini, still thinking of Liberty. And anon the tiny young English amphibian comes ashore to fling himself dripping at the feet of the patriot and to carol the Republican ode he has composed in the course of his swim. 'He's wonderfully active—active in mind and body,' Watts-Dunton says to me. 'I come ...

— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... can swim exceedingly well are not those who have taken courses in the theory of swimming at natatoriums, from professors of the amphibian art—they were just boys who jumped into the ol' swimmin' hole, and came home with shirts on wrong-side out and a tell-tale dampness ...

— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of his insect contemporaries, not only are the nutritious particles supplied by its prey, by the addition of which to its frame, growth takes place, laid down, each in its proper spot, and in such due proportion to the rest, ...

— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... disappearance of gills was directly due to the necessity of breathing air, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the terrestrial legs were originally evolved from some type of fishes' fins by the use of the fins for terrestrial locomotion. Yet neither the amphibian larva nor the embryo of higher Vertebrates develops anything closely similar to a fin. There is no gradual change of a fin-like limb into a leg, but the leg develops directly from a simple bud of tissue. The larva of the Urodela ...

— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... like those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air. ...

— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

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