Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ganoid
/ˈɡænɔɪd/adjective
Having the thick, hard, glossy scales of fish such as gars and sturgeons.
The Greek roots
γάνος
gános
sheen, brightness
εἶδος
eîdos
form, appearance
Literally: “shining in form”
The story of the word
Agassiz coined it in the 1830s for the gloss, and the shine is structural: the scales carry a layer of ganoine hard enough to work as armour, and gar hide was once used as an abrasive. His scheme of classifying fish by scale type collapsed, so ganoid now describes a scale rather than a group of animals. The same gan- root, the one meaning gleam or gladden, sits inside the name Ganymede.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ganoineGanymede
In a sentence
A sturgeon's ganoid scutes blunt an ordinary filleting knife.