Catostomus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A genus of freshwater fish in the sucker family, native to North America, with downturned mouths for feeding on the bottom
2. The scientific name for a group of North American bottom-feeding freshwater fish that belong to the sucker family
3. Name of a genus of sucker fishes found in rivers and lakes of North America, distinguished by their protruding lips

Etymology: Catostomus is the scientific genus name for the suckers, a group of freshwater fish found mainly in North America. It was coined in the 19th century, not in antiquity, and it is built from two Greek parts: "kata", meaning "down", and "stoma", meaning "mouth". Together they describe the fish's most distinctive feature, a mouth positioned on the underside of the head, which it uses to vacuum up food from the bottom of streams and lakes. The name was given by the American naturalist Charles Alexandre Lesueur in 1817, when he described the white sucker, which is now known as Catostomus commersonii. Lesueur was working in the scientific tradition of giving animals Latinized or Greek-based names that encoded a visible trait, so the name is a technical coinage rather than an old folk word.