Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Diatom
/ˈdaɪətɒm/noun
A single-celled alga enclosed in a two-part shell of silica.
The Greek roots
διά
diá
through, apart
τέμνειν
témnein
to cut
Literally: “cut in two”
The story of the word
The name describes the shell: two glass halves that fit together like a petri dish and its lid. When the cell divides, each daughter keeps one half and builds a smaller new one inside it, so a line of diatoms shrinks slightly with every generation until sexual reproduction resets the size. The same verb cuts through atom and anatomy.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1840s
Same family
atomanatomyepitomedichotomy
In a sentence
Diatomaceous earth is a quarry of dead diatoms, each one a glass box.