Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Sirenian
/saɪˈriːniən/noun
Any member of the order of aquatic herbivorous mammals that includes manatees and dugongs.
The Greek roots
Σειρήν
Seirḗn
Siren
Literally: “of the Sirens”
Follow a root:Σειρήν2 words
The story of the word
The order is named on the old sailors' story that these animals were what lay behind mermaid sightings, a nursing dugong holding a calf at the surface being the usual candidate. Homer's Sirens were birds with women's heads who killed by singing, not fish-tailed swimmers at all; the fishy version is medieval. Sea cows do not sing, but they do surface, which was apparently enough.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
sirenmermaid
In a sentence
Only four sirenian species survive, and Steller's sea cow was hunted out within thirty years of its discovery.