Re: Don't leave the girls out (was FW: Dinosaur Exhibit)

[NJPharris@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/2/99 10:11:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
Dinogeorge@aol.com writes:

<< << And, of course, _Deinonychus_ ("terrible claws"). >>
 
 Right. _Deinonychus_ and _Mononykus_ and other such names use the "onychos" 
 root also, though spelled a bit differently from the way it's spelled in 
 _Aetonyx_, _Baryonyx_, and _Gryponyx_. There's also an _Onychosaurus_, but 
 it's >not< named for claws. Rather, it's named for the hooklike shape of 
some 
 of its osteoderms. It's presently considered to be one of the numerous 
 synonyms of _Struthiosaurus_.
  >>

OK.  Delete this right now if you feel you cannot stomach an Ancient Greek 
lesson today.

The word "onyx" in Greek means "(finger)nail" or "claw".  The stem of this 
word is onych-*; "onyx" is the nominative form (the form used for the subject 
of a sentence and traditionally taken as the base form of the word).  It 
consists of the stem onych- plus the nominative ending -s: onych+s > onyx.

The stem form, onych-, is used as the base of the other cases (whose 
functions we don't need to get into now): onychos, onychi, onycha, onyches, 
onychon, etc.  It is also used in compounds, like in _Onychosaurus_.

Words that end in -onychus are technically adjectives in form: 
_Deinonychus_="having terrible claws", consisting of the stem dein(o)- plus 
the stem onych- plus the masculine adjective ending -os (-us in Latinized 
Greek).

So, to sum up, "onyx" is the noun, meaning "claw".  Names that end in 
-onychos are adjectives meaning "having [some kind of] claws".  Both types 
require masculine forms of their species names.

_Mononykus_ is, IMHO, a misspelling, as k and ch are two distinct sounds in 
Greek.  The name really should have been _Mononyx_ from the beginning.

Whew.  I feel better now.

Nick P.

*Incidentally, the root onych- in Ancient Greek is related to the English 
word "nail" and also to Latin terms like "ungual" and "ungulate".  But that's 
another story!