From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtadpoletad‧pole /ˈtædpəʊl $ -poʊl/ noun [countable] HBAa small creature that has a long tail, lives in water, and grows into a frog or toad
Examples from the Corpus
tadpole• Not far away, in an old ditch called the Newtie, Ludo and I would come to catch tadpoles and newts.• Western spadefoot toads burrow into the wash bottom, emerging to produce another batch of mosquito larvae-eating tadpoles during the summer rains.• Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks.• Gurdon transferred cells from the intestinal lining of tadpoles that had already begun to feed.• The extent to which spadefoot tadpoles become cannibalistic varies between the different species and according to ecological circumstance.• Now only one lake supports tadpoles.• After a fortnight, the whole of the female's back is rippling with the movements of the tadpoles beneath.• Their tadpoles can exploit bodies of water not excessively populated with competitors, and some are adapted to very restricted niches.Origin tadpole (1400-1500) toad + poll “head” ( → POLL1) 