Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Phylum
/ˈfaɪləm/noun
The rank of biological classification below kingdom and above class.
The Greek roots
φῦλον
phûlon
race, tribe, stock
φύω
phúō
to grow, bring forth
Literally: “a stock, a growth”
The story of the word
Ernst Haeckel needed a rank for the great structural divisions of animals and took φῦλον in 1866, latinised as phylum. The Greek word means a stock in the growing sense, from φύω, to sprout, so a phylum is a branch that grew, which is exactly the picture Haeckel was drawing when he invented phylogeny in the same years. Do not confuse it with the φύλλον of filo pastry, which is a leaf, one letter and one meaning away.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1860s
Same family
phylogenyphylephylogenetic
In a sentence
Molluscs make up a phylum of over eighty thousand described species.