Definition of "gill" []

• Zoology The respiratory organ of most aquatic animals that breathe water to obtain oxygen, consisting of a filamentous structure of vascular membranes across which dissolved gases are exchanged. (noun)
• The wattle of a bird. Often used in the plural. (noun)
• Informal The area around the chin and neck. (noun)
• Botany One of the thin, platelike structures on the underside of the cap of a mushroom or similar fungus. (noun)
• To catch (fish) in a gill net. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Ignore for the moment, the implication behind the misleading use of the phrase gill slits (and the 18th century frauds of militant evolutionist Ernst Haeckel) and consider the pair of words dramatically offset in the caption: embryonic humans a dramatic yet subtle change from the more common media phrase: human embryos."
• "At a very early stage we notice in the embryo of man and the other amniotes, at each side of the head, the remarkable and important structures which we call the gill-arches and gill-clefts (Figures"
• "Comb-like structures called gill rakers filter tasty critters like krill out of the water for the sharks to dine on."