Mammal

How to spell mammal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mammal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mammal mean?

1. nounA warm-blooded animal whose females produce milk to feed their young.

Mammal in a sentence

• The blue whale is the largest mammal on the planet.

• A bat is the only mammal capable of true flight.

Where does mammal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin mamma, meaning 'breast' or 'teat', the very feature that defines this class of animals: the mothers feed their young on milk. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus coined the formal Latin term Mammalia in 1758 to group these milk-producing animals, choosing the nursing trait as the defining characteristic over fur or warm blood. English then drew the singular 'mammal' from that scientific Latin in the early nineteenth century, around the 1820s. The same mamma root survives in everyday words such as 'mammary', as in mammary glands, which makes the double m easy to remember. The doubled m at the front and the single l at the end are the small spelling points to watch.

How the word is built

• mamm- (from Latin mamma: breast)
• -al (noun/adjective suffix)