Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Angiosperm
/ˈændʒiəspɜrm/noun
A flowering plant whose seeds develop enclosed inside an ovary.
The Greek roots
ἀγγεῖον
angeîon
vessel, container
σπέρμα
spérma
seed
Literally: “seed in a vessel”
The story of the word
Ἀγγεῖον was the everyday Greek word for a jar, a bucket or a vessel in the body. Botanists used it for the ovary that encloses the seed and later becomes the fruit, so an apple is the vessel in the name. Medicine took the same root in the other direction, into angiography and angioplasty, which concern blood vessels rather than seed cases.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
gymnospermangiographyspermspore
In a sentence
Angiosperms took over most habitats during the Cretaceous.