Definition of "pipefish" [pipe•fish]

• Any of various slim elongated fishes of the family Syngnathidae, living in temperate and warm seas and characterized by a tubelike snout and an external covering of bony plates. (noun)

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.

• "A skinny little fish called the pipefish is high on the list of wildlife oddities, for the male of the species is the one which gets pregnant."
• "The pipefish, which is related to the seahorse, has an unusual way of organising childcare."
• "This one contained a slab of grey stone from the Marecchia River Formation in Italy, bearing the complete skeleton of a 20+ centimeter specimen of Syngnathus acus, an extinct species of pipefish from the Lower Pliocene (about 3-5 million years old)."