polypus

From Latin polypus, from Ancient Greek πολύπους (polúpous). Doublet of polyp.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑlɪpəs/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɒlɪpəs/
• Hyphenation: pol‧y‧pus

polypus (plural polypi or polypuses)

1. A medical phenomenon.
   1. (medicine) A polyp. [from 14th c.]
      • 1898, Werner's magazine, volume 20:

        The nasal passages should be carefully examined for symptoms of stegnosis, enlargement of the turbinated bones, polypi, etc.

   2. (hematology, pathology) A cardiac thrombus usually found post-mortem. [from 17th c.]
2. An aquatic creature.
   1. (obsolete) A tentacled cephalopod, such as an octopus, squid, or cuttlefish. [16th–19th c.]
      • 1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, section VII:

        He had been becalmed in the tropical seas, and had watched, in eager expectation, though unhappily always in vain, to see the colossal polypus rise from the water, and entwine its enormous arms round the masts and the rigging.

      • 1830, Alfred Tennyson, “The Kraken”, in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical:

        From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
        Unnumbered and enormous polypi
        Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

   2. (now rare) Any of various simple aquatic invertebrates having mouths surrounded by tentacles, including hydrozoa and anthozoa; including the sessile life stages of organisms whose corresponding free-swimming stage is the medusa. [from 18th c.]

From Ancient Greek πολύπους (polúpous) (or from Doric Ancient Greek πώλυπος (pṓlupos) for the variant with long ō).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈpɔ.ly.puːs] or (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈpoː.ly.pʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈpɔː.li.pus]

pō̆lypū̆s m (genitive pō̆lypodis); third declension

1. octopus
2. cuttlefish
3. nasal tumor

• A variant with long ō is found occasionally in Ovid and Horace, perhaps to make the meter scan more easily; this variant has its origin in the Doric Greek form of the noun.

Third-declension noun.

• “polypus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “polypus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "polypus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• polypus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.