Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Gastropod
/ˈɡæstrəpɒd/noun
A mollusc of the class that includes snails, slugs and limpets, moving on a single muscular foot.
The Greek roots
γαστήρ
gastḗr
belly, stomach
πούς
poús
foot
Literally: “belly-foot”
The story of the word
Cuvier grouped these animals as Gastéropodes in the 1790s because a snail looks as though it crawls on its stomach. The foot is muscle, not gut, but the name held and English had gastropod by the nineteenth century. γαστήρ also gives gastric and gastronomy; πούς turns up in octopus, tripod and podium.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
gastricgastronomyoctopusarthropod
In a sentence
Most of the shells on that beach belong to gastropods, and almost all of them coil to the right.