mesopelagic
adjective, noun
mesopelagic is an adjective meaning “Describing the pelagic zone of the ocean between the photic epipelagic and the aphotic bathypelagic zones, characterized by very minimal light” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-S-O-P-E-L-A-G-I-C, and it appears about once in every 31 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does mesopelagic mean?
adjective
- 1
Describing the pelagic zone of the ocean between the photic epipelagic and the aphotic bathypelagic zones, characterized by very minimal light.
noun
- 1
A mesopelagic fish
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of mesopelagic
- mesopelagics plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is mesopelagic?
Mesopelagic appears about once in every 31 million words in written English, the 169,822nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Mesopelagic in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense relating to the zone of the ocean between the photic epipelagic and the aphotic :
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Portuguese | mesopelágico |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does mesopelagic come from?
From meso- + pelagic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).