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An invertebrate is a living creature with no backbone — no row of bones down the middle of its back. Insects, spiders, worms, snails, , crabs, and are all invertebrates. Animals that do have a backbone (fish, birds, frogs, lizards, , you) are vertebrates. Scientists use invertebrate all the time; in everyday talk children more often say bug, worm, or the animal's own name, which is fine, though actually a snail is an invertebrate and not a bug. The word is also an adjective: invertebrate animals. The in- here means not, the same not as in invisible.
無脊椎動物
組成in- (not) + vertebrate (an animal with a backbone).
同家族的字
- vertebratethe opposite: an animal that does have a backbone
- vertebraone of the small bones that make the backbone
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
invertebratenoun/ɪnˈvəːtɪbrət/
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An animal without vertebrae (i.e., without a backbone).
- Yet despite sounding inhospitable, grasslands such as this are home to a huge variety of smaller herbs and wildflowers, including some of the UK's rarest orchids and invertebrates, in addition to being home to butterfly species such as the Chalkhill Blue.
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informalA spineless person; a coward.
invertebrateadj/ɪnˈvəːtɪbrət/
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Without a backbone: without vertebrae.
- Tear it up, and put a fragment under the microscope, and, wonder of wonders! see the maze of geometric forms exhibited in the bones of the creature; for who can help regarding the spicules as bones, even though a sponge be invertebrate?
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Cowardly, uncourageous; lacking character.
- This week Fifa’s morally invertebrate president, Gianni Infantino, gave a speech that attempted to paint his World Cup as a marker of a grand struggle between the bright new world and corrupt old Europe, with Infantino himself the Mandela at its centre.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。