Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Selachian
/sɪˈleɪkiən/noun
A shark or, in older usage, any cartilaginous fish.
The Greek roots
σέλαχος
sélakhos
cartilaginous fish, shark
Literally: “the gleaming fish”
Follow a root:σέλαχος1 word
The story of the word
Aristotle used σέλαχος as a group term for the cartilaginous fishes in his zoology, two thousand years before anyone formalised the class. The name is usually connected with σέλας, gleam or brightness, though what gleamed is disputed: the sheen of the skin, or the light some species give off. The same σέλας is generally taken to lie behind σελήνη, the moon, and so behind the element selenium.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
seleniumselenology
In a sentence
Victorian handbooks list the basking shark among the larger selachians.