Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Triceratops
/traɪˈsɛrətɒps/noun
A large horned dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous with a bony neck frill.
The Greek roots
τρι-
tri-
three
κέρας
kéras
horn
ὤψ
ṓps
face, eye
Literally: “three-horned face”
The story of the word
O. C. Marsh first saw the animal as a pair of horn cores sent to him from Colorado, and in 1887 filed them under an extinct bison. Two years later, with better material, he named Triceratops and counted the horns into the name. The third one, on the snout, is the runt of the set.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1889
Same family
rhinoceroskeratinopticcyclops
In a sentence
The museum's Triceratops skull weighs more than the car that brought it.