octopian

English

Adjective

octopian (comparative more octopian, superlative most octopian)

1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling an octopus; octopuslike.
   • 1893, Robert Bell, A physician's poems, page 25:

     But darker still the shadows gather round, / And further deepen, when no outlet's found / By which the pent-up stream may overflow, / And on the stricken heart relief bestow. / When poignant Grief, with its octopian arms, / Enthrals its victim, […]

   • 1894, The American Journal of Politics, page 628:

     With insidious creepings it fastens its octopian arms on the body politic, before scarcely its presence is perceived. The first cause in which it robs the people of their privileges is always a worthy one. A railway is built to connect East and West. […]

   • 1910, Electrical Review and Western Electrician, page 97:

     One great trouble with central stations roused to activity by oratory and co-operativa rebuke has been the tendency to switch with altogether unjustifiable suddenness from “octopian graspingness” to “altruistic philanthropy.”

   • 2007, A. K. Otterness, Tales from Inside the Boerarrium, page 2:

     […] a vast octopian media-saturated vision of linked relays, chaos, volatility […]

   • 2004, Erica Fudge, Renaissance Beasts, page 179:

     These slippages have characteristically drawn the attention of Derrida, who categorizes the many oddities involved in the category of human uniqueness and, for that matter, in the very words human and animal themselves. If an octopus divided the world into the octopian and everything else, would that make sense?

Synonyms

• see list in octopuslike