How to Use medusa in a Sentence

medusa

noun
  • The medusa danced before her, flaunting its translucent skirts.
    — L. S. Asekoff, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
  • The soft, circular body, known as the medusa, rests on the seafloor while just a few short, tentacles float above them.
    — Hannah Knighton, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Feb. 2020
  • Gold thought that genes unique to jellyfish would be active during the transformation from polyp to medusa.
    — Quanta Magazine, 8 Jan. 2019
  • From that polyp colony, free-swimming medusae bud off and develop into mature adults within a matter of weeks.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 26 May 2026
  • In its medusa form, the jellyfish grows to up to 25mm in diameter, about the size of a nickel coin.
    — Keith Matheny, Freep.com, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Once fully grown, the medusae spawn a colony and repeat the asexual reproduction process.
    — Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Gold explained that the medusa stage represents a quantum leap in complexity.
    — Quanta Magazine, 8 Jan. 2019
  • The polyps later morph into the recognizable, free-floating jellyfish forms known as medusas.
    — Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Dec. 2024
  • Only four tentacles extend from the body to create the entire jellyfish, called a medusa, according to the study.
    — Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 2 July 2024
  • When first released, Marfenin’s hydrozoan medusae are immature.
    — Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Fossilized polyps have been found in about 560-million-year old rocks, but the origin of the more free-swimming medusa or jellyfish is not well understood.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 2 Aug. 2023
  • If so, scientists are hopeful that once conditions in the lake improve, a new generation will again produce the free swimming adult medusa that so delight tourists.
    — National Geographic, 4 May 2016
  • To go from being a stationary polyp to a floating medusa is almost akin to humans evolving the ability to swim through the air and capture birds with springy, netlike appendages.
    — Quanta Magazine, 8 Jan. 2019
  • Now, after more than a century of searching, paleontologists are beginning to find the missing medusas.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Aug. 2023
  • Ordinarily, jellyfish are born from eggs and grow into larvae, which morph into polyps before becoming free-swimming medusa.
    — Erica Tennenhouse, Discover Magazine, 8 Aug. 2018
  • Most species of medusa (or adult) jellyfish live for a few months in the wild, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
    — Olivia Munson, USA TODAY, 30 Mar. 2024
  • Their medusa, or visible jellyfish stage, appears sporadically and unpredictably — a particular location might have them one year and not the next, even if conditions are similar.
    — Keith Matheny, Freep.com, 6 Aug. 2025
  • During this, a medusa jellyfish will revert back to its polyp stage, according to American Museum of Natural History.
    — Olivia Munson, USA TODAY, 30 Mar. 2024
  • In the 1990s Italian researchers discovered that Turritopsis dorhnii, a jellyfish the size of a pen tip, reverts back and forth from a medusa to a polyp, earning the nickname the immortal jellyfish.
    — National Geographic, 2 Mar. 2016

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'medusa.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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