Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Cyclostome
/ˈsaɪkləstoʊm/noun
A jawless fish such as a lamprey or hagfish, whose mouth is a circular sucking disc.
The Greek roots
κύκλος
kýklos
circle, ring
στόμα
stóma
mouth
Literally: “round mouth”
The story of the word
Nineteenth-century zoologists sorted fish by the mouth, and lampreys and hagfish have no jaws at all, only a ring of horn teeth around a hole. That got them the name and a long argument about whether they belonged together, since hagfish lack even the rudimentary vertebrae of a lamprey. Molecular work has since put the two back in one group.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
stomachstomacycloneencyclopedia
In a sentence
Sea lampreys, the best known cyclostomes, wrecked the Great Lakes trout fishery after they got past Niagara.