Planktivore

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An organism that eats plankton, the tiny floating organisms that drift in water bodies
2. A creature that subsists primarily by consuming plankton and other microscopic life forms suspended in water
3. An animal whose diet consists mainly of plankton and other small organisms found drifting in aquatic environments

Etymology: Plankton came into English in the 1880s, when the German zoologist Victor Hensen coined the term for the drifting organisms of the sea. The Greek root "planktos" means "wandering" or "drifting," which suits creatures carried by currents rather than swimming against them. The second half, "-vore," comes from Latin "vorare," meaning "to devour" or "to swallow whole," the same root behind "voracious." Its ancestry runs back through the Proto-Italic language to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root "*gʷerh₃-," which also gave rise to words for swallowing and eating. English adopted "-vore" as a combining element, so it attaches readily to classical stems. Put together, "planktivore" is a modern scientific compound describing an animal that feeds on plankton. It is a technical coinage built from classical parts, not a word that the ancient Greeks or Romans would have recognised.

Synonyms: plankton-eater