Oyster

How to spell oyster

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce oyster

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oyster mean?

1. nounAn edible marine mollusc with a rough, hinged shell, some kinds of which produce pearls.

Oyster in a sentence

• The chef shucked each oyster before arranging it on crushed ice.

• A single oyster can filter many litres of seawater each day.

Where does oyster come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word travelled into English through Old French oistre, which itself came from the Latin ostrea, meaning an oyster or other shellfish. The Latin was borrowed from the Greek ostreon, literally 'a shell', a word closely tied to ostrakon, the shell or potsherd that Athenians scratched names onto when they voted to banish a citizen (the origin of 'ostracise'). The same family of Greek roots also gives us 'osteo-' words about bone, since both bone and shell are hard outer structures. English adopted the term in the 1300s, and the spelling settled with the 'oy' opening that mirrors the diphthong heard in the French source. That 'oy' beginning, rather than a more phonetic 'oi', is the small trap worth remembering.

How the word is built

• oyster (single root, from Greek ostreon: shell); no separable prefix or suffix