Medusa
(mɪˈdjuːsə)
Also 4 Meduse.
[a. L. Medūsa, a. Gr. Μέδουσα.]
1. Gr. Myth. One of the three Gorgons whose head, with snakes for hair, turned him who looked upon it into stone; she was slain by Perseus, and her head fixed on the ægis or shield of Athene. Hence used allusively.
| 1390 Gower Conf. I. 56 Cast noght thin yhe upon Meduse, That thou be torned into Ston. 1594 Greene & Lodge Looking Glasse (1598) G 1, She is faire Lucina to your King, But fierce Medusa to your baser eye. 1598 Hakluyt Voy. I. 222 Being as it were astonished with the snaky visage of Medusa. 1667 Milton P.L. ii. 611 Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The Ford. 1753 Richardson Grandison (1811) IV. xxvi. 207 But, after what Emily told me, she appears to me as a Medusa. 1882 M. Arnold Irish Ess. 179 And the true and simple reason against inequality they avert their eyes from, as if it were a Medusa. |
| attrib. 1876 Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. vi. xlviii, The Medusa-apparition was made effective beyond Lydia's conception by the shock it gave Gwendolen. 1901 Harper's Mag. Apr. 684/1 Medusa-like locks fell in wild profusion over his bare shoulders. 1903 Edin. Rev. Apr. 407 The tragic beauty of a Medusa head. |
2. Zool. (Pl.
medusæ,
-as.)
a. A jelly-fish or sea-nettle; any one of the soft gelatinous discophorous hydrozoans.
b. One of the two types of reproductive zooids in hydrozoans: opposed to
hydroid.
Applied by Linnæus as the L. name of a genus (from the resemblance of certain species to a head with snaky curls). Now disused as a term of classification, but still employed descriptively,
esp. as denoting one of the types recurring in the alternation of generations of certain hydrozoa.
| 1758 Borlase Nat. Hist. Cornw. 256 The Urtica marina..is called Medusa. Ibid. 257 Another variety of the medusa's. 1832 Macgillivray tr. Humboldt's Trav. i. 28 The whole sea was covered with a prodigious quantity of medusæ. 1835 Kirby Hab. & Inst. Anim. I. vii. 222 They [sc. Salpes] are gelatinous like the medusas and beroes. 1848 E. Forbes (title) A monograph of the British naked-eyed Medusæ. 1888 Rolleston & Jackson Anim. Life 752 The ovum is marked, as it always is in Craspedote Medusae. Ibid. 753 In C[unina] proboscidea the young sexually mature Medusa differs entirely from its parent. |
c. attrib., as
medusa-bud,
medusa-budding,
medusa form,
medusa generation,
medusa-larva,
medusa-type;
medusa-like,
medusa-shaped,
adjs.| 1851 Edinb. New Philos. Jrnl. L. 268 The *Medusa-bud falls off before its full development. |
| 1871 Allman Gymnobl. Hydroids 82 The phenomenon of *medusa-budding does not necessarily find its extreme term in the formation of the medusa itself. |
| 1878 Bell tr. Gegenbaur's Comp. Anat. 95 Swimming Hydroid colonies, all the persons of which have passed into the *Medusa form. |
| 1855 W. S. Dallas in Syst. Nat. Hist. I. 254 A *Medusa generation may go on producing Medusa generations. |
| 1888 Brooks in Stud. Biol. Labor. Johns Hopkins Univ. IV. 148 The hydranth is essentially a *medusa-larva. |
| 1848 E. Forbes Naked-eyed Medusæ 81 Mr. Lister..describes and figures *Medusa-like animals in course of production from Campanulariæ. |
| 1846 Dana Zooph. iii. (1848) 23 The *medusa-shaped young. |
| 1871 Allman Gymnobl. Hydroids 84 A very different *medusa-type. |