Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Cotyledon
/ˌkɒtɪˈliːdən/noun
The first leaf or pair of leaves inside a seed, which feeds the seedling before true leaves open.
The Greek roots
κοτυληδών
kotylēdṓn
cup-shaped hollow
Literally: “cup-shaped hollow”
Follow a root:κοτυληδών3 words
The story of the word
κοτύλη was a small cup and also a measure of about a quarter litre, and the derived word meant any cup-shaped hollow: the hip socket, the suckers along an octopus arm. English took it in the 1500s for structures on the placenta, and eighteenth-century botany moved it to the seed leaf. Split a soaked broad bean along its seam and the two halves in your hand are its cotyledons.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1540s
Same family
monocotyledondicotyledoncotyloid
In a sentence
The cotyledons came up pale and fat, then withered once the real leaves appeared.
Count the cotyledons and you already know a good deal about the plant.