Salp

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of marine invertebrate found in oceanic waters, often characterized by its gelatinous, barrel-shaped body and ability to swim by contracting its body
2. An organism that belongs to a class of tunicates, typically forming part of the plankton in marine ecosystems
3. A sea creature known for its unique locomotion mechanism, which involves expelling water to move through the water column

Etymology: The salp is a transparent, barrel-shaped sea creature, but its name comes from a fish. In ancient Greek, "sálpē" was the name for a sea bream, a fish known to the Greeks as a food source. That fish name passed into French as "salpe", and English took the word from French for the modern sense of the gelatinous animal, which is a close relative of the sea squirt rather than a fish at all. The name is a case of two forms of one word arriving separately. The Latin-influenced form "salpa" entered English as well, so the two words are doublets: the same ancient root reaching English along different routes. The link between a Greek fish and a drifting, tubular marine creature is simply a resemblance in name-giving, not a shared biology.

Synonyms: salpa