mammal的词源

英文词源

mammal: mammal: [19] Etymologically, mammal denotes an ‘animal that suckles its young’. The word is a derivative of mammalia [18], the term for that whole class of animals, coined by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus from Latin mammālis ‘of the breast’. This in turn was based on mamma ‘mother, breast’, which has been traced back to a prehistoric Indo-European *mammā.

There are obvious links with ‘mother’-terms in other languages, such as Greek mámmē, French maman, Italian mamma, Russian mama, Welsh mam, and English mamma and mummy, but whether a sustained chain of descent and borrowing is involved, or simply parallel formation based on the syllable ma, imitative of the sound of a suckling baby, is not clear. Mammary [17] is an English derivative of Latin mamma, in the sense ‘breast’.
=> mamma, mammary, mummy
mammal (n.): 1826, anglicized form of Modern Latin Mammalia (1773), coined 1758 by Linnaeus for the class of mammals, from neuter plural of Late Latin mammalis "of the breast," from Latin mamma "breast," perhaps cognate with mamma.

来自拉丁语mammalis,乳房的，来自mamma,乳房。瑞典生物学家林奈借用拉丁词来指哺乳动物。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：mammal 词源，mammal 含义。

拉丁语mamma不但表“妈妈”，还有“乳房”的意思；由它产生拉丁语mammalis（乳房的）；瑞典博物学家林奈根据此拉丁语创造了术语Mammalia（哺乳类）；单词mammal就是该术语的简化。同源词还有mammary（乳房的）。此类单词可能是对婴儿吮吸乳汁的声音的模仿。