Etymologically
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mammal

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 31 October 2026 at 23:02. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • US: /ˈmæməl/[1]

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

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