Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ascidian
/əˈsɪdiən/noun
A sea squirt: a sac-shaped marine animal that filters food through two siphons.
The Greek roots
ἀσκίδιον
askídion
little wineskin
Literally: “little wineskin”
Follow a root:ἀσκίδιον1 word
The story of the word
ἀσκός is a wineskin, the sewn goat hide that carried wine and water, and ἀσκίδιον is the diminutive. Sea squirts earned the name by shape, a leathery bag with two openings, cemented to a rock. Their larvae swim with a notochord and a nerve cord and then settle, glue themselves down and reabsorb the lot, which is how an animal named after a wine bag turns out to be a near relative of the vertebrates.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ascusascosporeascites
In a sentence
The pilings were furred with ascidians and hydroids.
An ascidian squirts a jet of water when you lift it out of the pool.