Hydrophobe sponges

• hydrophobe: In biology, lacking an affinity for water, unable to absorb water, a strange condition for a sponge.
• hydrophobe: used to describe Stephen Deadalus in Ulysses: "That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the month of October of the preceding year)"

• hydrophobia A symptom of rabies in humans, an inability to swallow liquids.
• sponge: a sea creature, (hardly hydrophobic)
• sponge: the light, fibrous, flexible, absorbent skeleton of certain of these organisms, used for bathing, cleaning, and other purpose (hardly hydrophobic)
• sponge: one who habitually depends on others for one's own maintenance → Stephen Deadalus in Ulysses.