Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Marsupial
/mɑːrˈsuːpiəl/noun
A mammal whose young are born tiny and complete their development attached to a teat, usually inside a pouch.
The Greek roots
μάρσιππος
mársippos
pouch, bag
Literally: “pouch animal”
Follow a root:μάρσιππος1 word
The story of the word
Greek μάρσιππος, a purse or bag, went into Latin as marsupium and stayed a word for money-holders until naturalists reached the Americas and Australia and needed a name for the pouch. The Greek word looks like a borrowing from an Iranian language, so the bag had already travelled a long way before it ended up on a kangaroo. A newborn red kangaroo is about the size of a jelly bean, blind and hairless, and climbs to the pouch on its own.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
In a sentence
Opossums are the only marsupials that got as far north as Canada.