polyp

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English polip, also polippe,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman polipe and Middle French polype,^[5][3] and directly borrowed from Latin pōlypus (“octopus, nasal polyp”).^[5][6][3] The Anglo-Norman noun is recorded from the second quarter of the 13th century for a growth in the nose.^[7][5] The zoological sense was borrowed again from French, from Réaumur's use of polype in 1742.^[5] The Latin noun comes from the Doric or Aeolic form Ancient Greek πωλύπος (pōlúpos), which corresponds to Ionic πουλύπους (poulúpous) and later πολύπους (polúpous), "octopus, nasal polyp".^[5] Most dictionaries analyse it as "many-footed", from πολύς (polús, “much, many”) and πούς (poús, “foot”),^[5][8][9][2] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *pele- (“to fill”) and *ped- (“foot”).^[6] Barnhart instead calls the Greek noun a Mediterranean word of unknown origin, reinterpreted by folk etymology as a compound.^[3] The OED reports that suggestion, based on the Doric form and the inflection, but notes that inflection as a compound of the word for "foot" already appears in Homer and in the dative Mycenaean Greek po-ru-po-de.^[5] The Latin noun is also the source of French poulpe (“octopus”),^[6][5] and the OED compares Spanish pólipo and Italian polipo.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A fleshy growth in the nasal passages: before 1400, in a translation of Lanfranc's Science of Cirurgie.^[5][3] Etymonline dates this sense to about 1400,^[6] and the Middle English Dictionary has the fuller form polipus from before 1398, in Trevisa.^[10] Barnhart explains the name by the growth's branches, like tentacles.^[3]

Semantic evolution

According to Ayto, applying the word for an octopus to a tumour, on account of its tentacle-like outgrowths, was already a Greek metaphor.^[9] English took the medical sense first,^[5][11] and in the late 16th century it also began to use the word for the octopus or cuttlefish itself, a use now obsolete.^[5][6][11] In 1742 the etymological idea returned through French as a name for simple tentacled water animals such as the hydra and the sea anemone;^[5][6] Ayto presents this as an 18th-century broadening of the word.^[9] In medicine the sense widened beyond the nose to a growth on any mucous membrane, and Barnhart records the extended sense of any small tumorlike growth from 1897.^[3][5][11]

Timeline

• before 1400 – a fleshy growth in the nasal passages.^[5][3]
• 1590 – an octopus or similar cephalopod (obsolete by 1753).^[5] Barnhart has an animal with many tentacles or feet from 1583,^[3] and Etymonline dates this use to the 1580s.^[6]
• 1602 – the spelling polyp.^[3]
• 1742 – a simple water animal with a mouth surrounded by tentacles.^[5][6]
• 1897 – any small tumorlike growth.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (zoology) A small water animal with a hollow tubular body and a ring of tentacles around the mouth, living alone or in a colony, as a hydra or a coral does.^[12][13][5]
2. A growth, usually benign and often on a stalk, that rises from a mucous membrane, as in the nose or the colon: The surgeon removed a small polyp during the examination.^[12][11][5]
3. (obsolete, 1590–1753) An octopus or similar cephalopod.^[5][11][13]

Word family

• polypoid
• polypous
• polyposis

Related words

• polypus
• poulp
• poly-
• foot
• polypod
• podium
• pew

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
11. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster