Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Tuna
/ˈtuːnə/noun
A large fast ocean fish caught for food and sold fresh or canned.
The Greek roots
θύννος
thýnnos
tunny fish
Literally: “the darting fish”
Follow a root:θύννος1 word
The story of the word
Θύννος was already an industry in Greek: Byzantium taxed the tunny run through the Bosporus and stamped the fish on its coins. The name is often connected with θύνω, to dart or rush, which suits a fish that cruises at speed for its whole life. English used tunny, from Latin thunnus, for four centuries; tuna is a late arrival from American Spanish atún, spreading with the California canneries in the 1880s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Spanish → American English
- First recorded
- 1880s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
A single bluefin tuna sold in Tokyo for the price of a house.