Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Cactus
/ˈkæktəs/noun
A fleshy spined plant of the American family Cactaceae.
The Greek roots
κάκτος
káktos
a spiny Sicilian plant
Literally: “the prickly plant”
Follow a root:κάκτος1 word
The story of the word
Theophrastus used κάκτος for a thistle-like plant of Sicily, most probably the cardoon. No cactus has ever grown wild anywhere near Greece. Linnaeus reached for the old name in the eighteenth century when he needed a label for the spiny New World succulents arriving in European collections, and the misfit stuck. English has never settled the plural, running cacti, cactuses and cactus in parallel.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
One cactus on the windowsill survived four years of neglect.