I was just looking up dinosaur in the AHD when my eye was caught by a photo of a graceful protozoan, Ceratium sp., illustrating the dinoflagellate entry. "Dinoflagellate?" I thought. "What's so scary about that little creature?" I looked at the etymology, and it turns out the dino- isn't from Greek δεινός 'terrifying,' as in dinosaur, but from δῖνος 'whirling,' which pleased me (though I had to then correct the Wikipedia article, which had given an incorrect etymology).
Posted by languagehat at September 5, 2007 02:02 PMDoes this mean that dinosaurs weren't really whirling lizards?
Posted by: Matt at September 6, 2007 09:44 AMI'm afraid it does.
Posted by: language hat at September 6, 2007 10:09 AM"I'm afraid it does."
I may never forgive you for this.
Posted by: michael farris at September 6, 2007 05:37 PMHahaaah! I already knew this! I'm good!!! :-)
On the other hand, there are quite terrible dinoflagellates. Red tides/killer algae are dinoflagellates.
Which brings us to the fact the term "protozoan" is just as useless as (the much less commonly used) "protophyte" when applied to dinoflagellates. They are very distantly related to animals and plants alike.
Posted by: David Marjanović at September 7, 2007 06:00 PMOh, and the "sp." part, which is short for "[I'm actually supposed to tell you more than just a genus name, but I don't know and/or care which] species", does not go in italics. :-)
Posted by: David Marjanović at September 7, 2007 06:02 PMD'oh! I knew that, but I stupidly copied it from the dictionary caption, itals and all. Corrected, and thanks!
Posted by: language hat at September 8, 2007 07:28 AM