Cirripedes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of marine arthropods that permanently attach to surfaces and have calcareous plates forming a hard shell
2. Sea-dwelling crustaceans covered by stiff protective plates, commonly found on rocks, ships, and other underwater objects
3. Small marine animals that remain fixed in one place with shells made of overlapping plates, known as barnacles

Etymology: "Cirripedes" is the plural of "cirripede", the name for the group of crustaceans that includes barnacles. The singular is built from two Latin roots: "cirrus", meaning a curl or tuft of hair, and "pes", meaning foot. Together they describe the feathery, curled limbs these animals use to sweep food from the water. The unusual feature behind the name is that barnacles spend their adult lives cemented head-down to a surface, so their legs, rather than a body they can move, do the feeding. The word therefore names the creature by the one part of it that is most visible while it is busy catching food.