mammal

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin Mammalia in an English form, first used in the plural.^[2][3][4][5] Mammalia is the name Linnaeus gave in 1758 to the class of animals that suckle their young,^[2][3][6] and is the neuter plural of Late Latin mammālis (“of the breast”),^[2][7][8] from mamma (“breast”),^[2][8][9] the source also of mammary;^[6] Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *mama,^[2] and Ayto notes the similar words for "mother" in many languages, which may be parallel formations from a syllable imitating a suckling baby.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

An animal of the class Mammalia: 1813, in J. M. Good's Pantologia.^[3][10] Etymonline and Barnhart date it to 1826, in Good's Book of Nature.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

The Latin class name came into English in 1773, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and the anglicized mammal followed forty years later.^[3][2] Its meaning has stayed scientific: a warm-blooded, hair-bearing vertebrate whose females have mammary glands that feed the young.^[3][11] Use as an adjective, of or like a mammal, is recorded from 1840.^[3] An earlier adjective mammal, "of the breasts", borrowed from French, appears only in Blount's glossary of 1656.^[3]

Timeline

• 1773 – Mammalia, the class name, in English.^[3]
• 1813 – an animal of the class Mammalia.^[3][10] Etymonline and Barnhart date the word to 1826.^[2][7]
• 1840 – as an adjective, of or like a mammal.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A warm-blooded vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia, whose females have mammary glands that secrete milk to feed the young.^[11][10][3] Most bear live young and have fur.^[2][4]

Word family

• mammalian
• mammalogy

Related words

• mammary
• mamma

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins