Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ophidian
/oʊˈfɪdiən/adjective
Belonging to or resembling snakes.
The Greek roots
ὄφις
óphis
snake
Literally: “snakelike”
Follow a root:ὄφις1 word
The story of the word
Ophidia was the old order name for snakes in zoology, built straight from ὄφις. Geologists use the same snake for ophiolite, a slab of ocean floor shoved up onto a continent, named for the mottled green serpentinite in it. The constellation Ophiuchus is the serpent-bearer, and the sun passes through it every December, which astrology has always quietly ignored.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ophioliteOphiuchusophidiophobia
In a sentence
There is something ophidian about the way he crosses a room.
The ophidian collection runs to four hundred preserved specimens.