triton
triton Lexical Profile
triton Game Scores & Validity
• noun
In Greek mythology, a minor sea deity or merman typically depicted as having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, and carrying a conch-shell trumpet.
"The marble fountain in the courtyard was adorned with sculptures of dolphins and tritons blowing into conch shells."
A large predatory marine gastropod mollusk of the family Ranellidae (or Charoniidae), native to tropical and temperate seas worldwide and noted for its large, colorful, spindle-shaped spiral shell often used as a trumpet.
"Coastal islanders historically used the hollowed shell of the giant triton as a signaling horn across the water."
The largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, discovered in 1846 and notable for having a retrograde orbit and active nitrogen geysers (capitalized as Triton).
"Data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft revealed that Triton has a geologically young surface covered in frozen nitrogen."
The positively charged nucleus of a tritium atom, consisting of one proton and two neutrons.
"In the fusion experiment, high-energy tritons were bombarded against a deuterium target to study nuclear reactions."
• Rhymes for triton
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed via Latin from Ancient Greek Tritōn, the name of the mythological sea deity who was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. The nuclear physics sense was coined in the 1930s as a blend of tritium and proton.