phocine

comparative more phocine · superlative most phocine

1. Pertaining to true seals (also known as earless seals, as opposed to eared seals such as sea lions); seallike.First known use 19th c.

   […] she had already yanked out of me the coveted section [of the newspaper] and retreated to her mat near her phocine mamma.

   1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC, page 44

   3 more examples

   The bargain was soon made, and Gioga equipped herself in her phocine garb, but when the Shetlander gazed on the stormy sea he was to ride through, his courage nearly failed him, and he begged of the old lady to hare the kindness to allow him to cut a few holes in her shoulders and flanks, that he might obtain a better fastening for his hands between the skin and the flesh.

   1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 268

   He telegraphed to the whaling ports of New England, and sent messages to San Francisco and Alaska, to know if a group of sea lions and other specimens of the phocine tribe could be secured.

   28 December 1871, New York Daily Standard

   She walked over towards me with an odd elegance, big strides, like a champion girl swimmer, say; muscled but lean, with a phocine grace.

   1987, William Boyd, The New Confessions

plural phocines

1. biologyA member of the subfamily Phocinae, comprising the "true" or "earless" seals.

   Phocines anchor their hands by flexing their fingers, digging them into the substrate, and then pulling their body forward by elbow and shoulder flexion.

   2007, Brian Keith Hall, Fins into Limbs, page 313