What does cuttle mean?
Cuttle is an informal English word for the cuttlefish, a marine animal belonging to the order Sepiida within the class of cephalopod molluscs. Cuttles are soft-bodied sea creatures with eight arms and two elongated tentacles, renowned for their remarkable ability to change skin colour and texture almost instantly, and for producing a dark ink once prized by artists as the pigment sepia. Inside the body sits a porous internal shell called the cuttlebone, which provides buoyancy and which beachcombers often find washed ashore; it is also commonly placed in birdcages as a calcium supplement. Although 'cuttlefish' remains the standard full name in scientific and everyday contexts, 'cuttle' survives as a convenient shortened form in natural-history writing and casual speech, particularly in British usage. The word traces back through Middle English to Old English origins shared with other words denoting pouch-like forms, reflecting the animal's rounded body.
nounA cuttle; chiefly a shortened or informal form of 'cuttlefish', referring to any of various marine cephalopod molluscs of the order Sepiida, having ten arms and a flattened internal shell known as the cuttlebone.
- A cuttlefish, especially when referred to informally or in shortened form.
"The fisherman hauled in a cuttle along with his net of squid."
"The aquarium's newest attraction is a tank of cuttles that change colour in the blink of an eye."
"Seabird keepers hang cuttlebones in cages because birds need the calcium they contain."
The plural is regular; however, in scientific contexts the family-level names (e.g. cuttlefishes) or the full form 'cuttlefish' are more common.
"Shallow seagrass meadows provide shelter for young cuttles during their first weeks of life."
The cuttle's ink gave us 'sepia' — artists were literally painting with cuttlefish before synthetic pigments took over.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cuttle
Cuttle descends from the Old English word cudele, meaning cuttlefish, which itself may be related to words for bag- or pod-shaped things such as cod, referring to the animal's rounded body. The fuller compound form cuttlefish arose later in English by combining cuttle with fish. Its most famous linguistic legacy is the pigment name sepia, taken directly from the Latin and Greek word for the cuttlefish, since the animal's dark ink was long used as an artist's colour.
Related word forms
How cuttle is actually used
In modern usage 'cuttle' almost always appears as a contraction of 'cuttlefish', and many writers simply use the fuller term. The word is informal and largely confined to natural-history writing and coastal contexts.
Easily confused with cuttle
Cattle are domesticated bovine livestock kept on land, whereas the cuttle is a small marine cephalopod related to squid and octopus.