Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Coral
/ˈkɔːrəl/noun
The hard skeleton built up by colonies of marine polyps, and the animals themselves.
The Greek roots
κοράλλιον
korállion
red coral
Literally: “red sea-stone”
Follow a root:κοράλλιον1 word
The story of the word
κοράλλιον named the red Mediterranean coral that was cut for beads and hung on children as an amulet. The word looks like a loan into Greek, possibly Semitic, and its ancestry has never been settled. Latin corallium and Old French coral brought it to English around 1300. Ovid explains the stuff as seaweed hardened by blood dripping from the Gorgon's head, which at least accounts for the colour.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
The coral bleached white in a single hot summer and has not come back.