Earth & SkyGreek → English
Hadal
/ˈheɪdəl/adjective
Belonging to the deepest ocean zone, below about 6,000 metres, found only in trenches.
The Greek roots
Ἅιδης
Háidēs
Hades, the underworld
Literally: “of the underworld”
Follow a root:Ἅιδης2 words
The story of the word
Coined by oceanographers in the 1950s after the abyssal zone below the bathyal, since the naming had already run out of Greek depths. Hades named the god before it named the place, and the region was often called "the house of Hades" to keep the two apart. Trieste reached the hadal floor of the Mariana Trench in 1960 and found a flatfish, or thought it did.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
Hadesabyssalbathyal
In a sentence
Hadal snailfish have been filmed at eight kilometres down.
Only about forty-five trenches worldwide reach hadal depths.