Any fish of the genus Ostracion or family Ostraciontidæ, inhabiting tropical seas, and having the body of angular cross-section and covered with bony hexagonal plates; a coffer-fish.
1804. Shaw, Gen. Zool., V. 420. Triquetral Trunk-fish.
1835. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 7), XII. 229/2. The horned trunk-fish, Ostracion cornutus, a native, like most of the genus, of the Indian and American seas.
1851. Gosse, Nat. Hist., Fishes, 288. The Trunk-fishes … have the body angular, four or three-sided, covered with angular plates of solid bone soldered together, and forming a sort of inflexible box, with openings for the mouth, the fins, the tail, and the gill-aperture.
1876. Goode, Fishes Bermudas, 23. The locomotion of the trunk-fishes is very peculiar.
