noun
very small silvery eellike schooling fishes that burrow into sandy beaches
• Syn: ↑sand lance, ↑sand eel, ↑launce
• Hypernyms: ↑spiny-finned fish, ↑acanthopterygian
• Member Holonyms: ↑Ammodytes, ↑genus Ammodytes
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noun or sand lance : any of several small elongate marine telecost fishes of the genus Ammodytes (family Ammodytidae) that do not exceed six or eight inches in length, associate in large schools, and remain buried in sandy beaches at ebb tide
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sand launce or sand lance,
any one of various small, elongate, marine fishes which burrow into the sand along beaches when the tide goes out; sand eel.
╂[< sand + launce, variant of lance (because of its shape)]
Useful english dictionary. 2012.