Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Hermaphrodite
/hɜːrˈmæfrədaɪt/noun
An organism carrying both male and female reproductive organs.
The Greek roots
Ἑρμῆς
Hermês
the god Hermes
Ἀφροδίτη
Aphrodítē
the goddess Aphrodite
Literally: “Hermes-and-Aphrodite”
The story of the word
Ovid tells it. Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, was bathing when the nymph Salmacis seized him and prayed never to be parted from him, and the gods obliged by fusing the two bodies into one. Biology took the name for snails, earthworms and most flowering plants, which carry both sets of organs as standard equipment. Applied to people the word is now avoided in medicine, where intersex has replaced it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
aphrodisiachermetic
In a sentence
Garden snails are hermaphrodites, so any two of them can mate.