Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “species” come from?

Species comes from Latin speciēs, meaning appearance or form, derived from the Proto-Indo-European root speḱ- meaning to look or observe.

species (English): Type or kind; An image, an appearance, a...

Definitions

  1. Type or kind; An image, an appearance, a...

Ancestry of “species”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1EnglishspecieType or kind, in various uses of the phrase in...
2EnglishSpecies—
3Latinspeciēs—
4Latinspeciō—
5Proto-Italicspekjōto observe, to see
6Proto-Indo-Europeanspéḱyetito be looking at, to keep looking at
7Proto-Indo-Europeanspeḱ-to see, to look, to observe

Words derived from “species”

  • subspecies
  • interspecies
  • multispecies
  • quasispecies
  • intraspecies
  • morphospecies
  • superspecies
  • ichnospecies
  • genospecies
  • biospecies
  • specieswide
  • transspecies
  • microspecies
  • genomospecies
  • chronospecies
  • monospecies
  • semispecies
  • infraspecies
  • nothospecies
  • coenospecies
  • paraspecies
  • ecospecies
  • specieslike
  • cospecies
Every word from Proto-Indo-European speḱ- →