Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Smilodon
/ˈsmaɪlədɒn/noun
The best known genus of sabre-toothed cat, extinct at the end of the last ice age.
The Greek roots
σμίλη
smílē
carving knife, chisel
ὀδούς
odoús
tooth
Literally: “knife tooth”
The story of the word
Peter Wilhelm Lund named the animal in 1842 from σμίλη, the small carving blade a sculptor or a surgeon worked with. The teeth are the whole argument: flattened side to side, finely serrated, and long enough to hang below the jaw with the mouth shut. Most of what we know comes from the La Brea tar pits, where thousands died going after prey that was already stuck.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1842
Same family
mastodonodontologyorthodontist
In a sentence
The museum's Smilodon skull came out of the tar pits with both canines intact.