Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Gamete
/ˈɡæmiːt/noun
A reproductive cell, egg or sperm, that fuses with another at fertilisation.
The Greek roots
γαμέτης
gamétēs
husband, spouse
Literally: “the married one”
Follow a root:γαμέτης1 word
The story of the word
γαμέτης is a husband and γαμετή a wife, both from γαμεῖν, to marry, the verb behind monogamy and bigamy. Nineteenth-century biology took the pair for the two sex cells, so every fertilisation is described in Greek as a wedding. English hears none of it, which is why gamete sounds like laboratory vocabulary while polygamy sounds like a social arrangement.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
Same family
monogamypolygamybigamygametophyte
In a sentence
Each gamete carries a single set of chromosomes.
Fertility clinics freeze gametes routinely now.