Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Myriapod
/ˈmɪriəpɑd/noun
Any of the many-legged arthropods including centipedes and millipedes.
The Greek roots
μυρίοι
mýrioi
ten thousand, countless
πούς
poús
foot
Literally: “countless feet”
The story of the word
Greek distinguished the two senses by accent: μύριοι, stressed on the first syllable, meant exactly ten thousand, while μυρίος meant countless. Centipedes and millipedes got the countless sense, and neither delivers on the Latin promise of its common name. Most centipedes have between thirty and fifty legs, and the record-holding millipede, described from a Western Australian borehole in 2021, reaches 1,306.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
myriadhexapodarthropodtripodoctopus
In a sentence
Turn over a rotting log and the myriapods scatter first.
Myriapods were among the earliest animals to breathe air on land.