Platypus

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈplætɪpəs/

Definitions

1. A monotreme mammal native to Australia that lays eggs, has a duck-like bill, venomous spurs, and a beaver-like tail
2. A venomous egg-laying mammal from Australia featuring a leathery bill resembling a duck's, beaver-like tail, and ankle spurs found only in males
3. An Australian monotreme with bill-like snout, webbed feet, beaver-similar tail, and venomous hind limbs that reproduces through egg-laying

Etymology: The animal's name is older than the animal's discovery in the scientific record. "Platypus" was already in use as a genus name for a type of beetle, a kind of ambrosia beetle, before it was given to the Australian mammal. Naturalists in the late 1700s, faced with a creature that seemed to be a mix of duck, beaver and mole, needed a Latin label, and they reached into the existing taxonomic vocabulary. The name itself is Greek. "Platypous" combines "platys," meaning flat or broad, and "pous," meaning foot, so it describes a flat-footed creature. That is a fitting description of the animal's broad, webbed feet, though the beetle carried the name first and the mammal inherited it through scientific Latin. In English, "platypus" is a doublet of "flatfoot," two words from the same Greek roots that reached the language by different routes, one as a scientific borrowing and the other as an ordinary English compound.