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/mˈəsəl/ Listen

noun

Mussel n.

(Zool.) Any one of many species of marine bivalve shells of the genus Mytilus, and related genera, of the family Mytidae. The common mussel (Mytilus edulis), and the larger, or horse, mussel (Modiola modiolus), inhabiting the shores both of Europe and America, are edible. The former is extensively used as food in Europe.

(Zool.) Any one of numerous species of Unio, and related fresh-water genera; called also river mussel. See Naiad, and Unio.

Mussel digger (Zool.), the grayback whale. See Gray whale, under Gray.

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Etymology of 'Mussel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mussel" Quotes from Famous Books

... Mt. Vernon, Ind. From there we went in a Ford touring car without any top and only one rear fender and drove over nine miles of the worst roads I ever motored over to the Wabash river where we hired a motor driven mussel boat to take us four miles down the river. The remaining three miles we made on foot, reaching this grove about ten a. m., and searched until late in the afternoon without locating the tree. This day and trip I am sure Mr. C. ...

— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... most of the afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from the slimy bottom ten or twelve feet below—or a weed—or a dead mussel. ...

— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... too, Orion Latham showed plainly that he considered that he, as an older acquaintance of the girl, could presume upon that fact. He clung to her throughout the evening like a mussel to duck grass. Of all the Big Wreck Cove youth, he was the only one that she could not put ...

— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... saddened look around; But he felt new joy his bosom swell, When glittering on the shadowed ground He saw a purple mussel-shell; Thither he ran, and he bent him low, He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow, And he pushed her over the yielding sand Till he came; to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure-boat As ...

— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... the way of a thought was that he was different from his parents—that they couldn't see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, with considerable precision ...

— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

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