Cyclostome

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A category of jawless aquatic creatures distinguished by a circular mouth adapted for feeding habits
2. An assemblage of marine organisms renowned for having a suction-feeding mouth rather than conventional jaws
3. A group of aquatic animals characterized by their round mouths used for attachment and feeding on various surfaces in their environments

Etymology: "Cyclostome" is built from two Greek elements: "kyklos," meaning "circle" or "ring," and "stoma," meaning "mouth." The name describes the animal's most striking feature, a round, suckerlike mouth with no jaws, which lampreys and hagfish use to clamp onto prey and rasp at its flesh. The word was formed in Modern Latin as "Cyclostomata," the name for this group of jawless fishes, and English took it from that scientific label. Its ancestry runs through the French "cyclostome," so the term reached English as a technical coinage rather than as an ordinary Greek word that people used in daily speech.