Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Zoo
/zuː/noun
A place where wild animals are kept and shown to the public.
The Greek roots
ζῷον
zôion
living creature, animal
Literally: “of living creatures”
Follow a root:ζῷον7 words
The story of the word
A clipping rather than a coinage. London's Zoological Gardens opened in Regent's Park in 1828 for scientific study, and Londoners had shortened the name to Zoo by 1847; a music hall song of 1867 about walking in the Zoo finished the job. The root zôion means a living thing generally, not an animal, which is why protozoa are first living things and a zodiac is a circle of creatures.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1847
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
zoologyprotozoazodiacazoic
In a sentence
The zoo now spends more on breeding programmes than on visitors.
By four in the afternoon the kitchen was a zoo.