Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Perissodactyl
/pəˌrɪsəˈdæktɪl/noun
A hoofed mammal bearing weight on an odd number of toes: horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs.
The Greek roots
περισσός
perissós
odd, excessive
δάκτυλος
dáktylos
finger, toe
Literally: “odd-toed”
The story of the word
Richard Owen drew the division in 1848 between odd-toed and even-toed hoofed mammals, and it has survived every revision of mammal classification since, including the molecular ones. A horse walks on one toe, the middle one, with the remains of the others up the leg as splint bones. δάκτυλος also names the metrical foot of long-short-short, because the finger has one long joint and two short.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1848
Same family
artiodactylpterodactyldactyl
In a sentence
Only sixteen perissodactyl species are left, and most of the rhinos among them are endangered.