Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Elasmobranch
/ɪˈlæzməbræŋk/noun
A shark, ray or skate, the cartilaginous fishes with exposed plate-like gill slits and no gill cover.
The Greek roots
ἔλασμα
élasma
beaten metal plate
βράγχια
bránkhia
gills
Literally: “plate-gilled”
The story of the word
ἔλασμα is metal hammered flat, from ἐλαύνω, to drive or beat out, and the name points at the row of five to seven bare gill slits along a shark's side where a bony fish would have a single hinged flap. Naturalists established the group in the 1830s. βράγχια is strictly the plural, so an elasmobranch is a plate-gills, singular creature and all.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
nudibranchbranchiallamellibranch
In a sentence
Every elasmobranch in the tank has to keep water moving over those gill slits somehow.