As its popular name indicates, the jellyfish is ungraspable in word and deed. It is neither fish nor vegetable, but a combination of both. Belonging to the order of zoophytes (from the Greek zoion, animal, and phyton, plant), along with other creatures of dubious character such as anemones and corals, the jellyfish has the uncanny ability to seem what it is not; it is an animal that passes as a plant, a sort of natural transvestite. Beautiful to watch yet abrasive-even fatal-to touch, sheer and opaque, capable of continuous mutations, jellyfish have often been compared to those other mysterious creatures, women, who keep men constantly guessing. It was after one such threatening female-the Medusa-that jellyfish were officially baptized by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788) in the mid-1700s, after decades of being confused with sea urchins and molluscs. Yet it was not until Péron methodically described twenty-nine genera of Medusae, establishing the enormous complexity of this ambiguous family, that these organisms could finally settle in a linguistic niche...
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
The language of jellyfish
Yo, Linnaeus!
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5 comments:
We molecular genomic types like referring to them as cnidarians. With corals and anemones the jellies are basically the entire phylum. Etymologize "cnidarian." I dares ya.
Hostile nettle?
I've never thought of them as part plant. They're very proteiny, even in looks, much more animals. And they sting, more like insects than nettles.
CKR
Note their kindred "anemones" are named after plants, and that reefs often get called "gardens." I think cnidarian comes from the Greek "nettle" and has no "hostile" element. It's just paranoia to look at that phylum and sea anenome.
(Urg! Blogger's causing me grief!)
I think we've got the prefix.
The suffix "-darian" seems to have a Latin etymological root in "hostile," although it can tend towards the more common "to give" from the Latin "dare."
Yes, Blogger grief today.
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