Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Perch
/pɜːrtʃ/noun
A spiny-finned freshwater fish with dark bars down its sides.
The Greek roots
πέρκη
pérkē
perch (the fish)
Literally: “the dark-spotted one”
Follow a root:πέρκη1 word
The story of the word
Πέρκη belongs with περκνός, dark-spotted or dusky, so the fish is named for the bars on its flank. Aristotle lists it among freshwater fish in the History of Animals. The perch a bird sits on is an unrelated word, Latin pertica, a pole, and the two only converge in English spelling.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
He caught three perch before breakfast and put them all back.