Octopus

How to spell octopus

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce octopus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does octopus mean?

1. nounA sea creature with a soft body and eight long arms covered in suckers.

Octopus in a sentence

• The diver watched an octopus slide into a crack in the reef.

• The aquarium fed the octopus a crab through the glass tunnel.

Where does octopus come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek oktopous, which combined okto, meaning 'eight', with pous, meaning 'foot', so the literal sense was 'eight-footed'. Scientists adopted the Latinised form octopus in the eighteenth century as a label for the eight-armed sea creature, and English took it up soon after. Because the second half traces back to the Greek pous rather than to a Latin noun, the strictly classical plural is octopodes, though in ordinary English octopuses is now the accepted everyday plural and octopi is a popular but technically mistaken Latin-style form. The same pous root surfaces in words such as 'tripod' (three feet) and 'podiatrist' (a foot doctor), while okto lives on in 'October' and 'octave'. Remembering that the ending is 'pus' from the Greek for foot, not 'pous' or 'puss', helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• octo- (eight)
• -pus (from Greek pous: foot)