Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 April 6

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April 6

Specific epithet

wiki:flax says that "utitatissimum" is the specific epithet for flax. That's cool; I get what they mean by specific epithet and it's it's a useful term for how I imagine they're using it. I might use it myself. (Can we think of more examples of this style?) But specific epithet redirects to binomial nomenclature, which is just the latin names for plants and animals and stuff. Then I look up specific epithet, and it is in fact just the second part of the Latin name. Is there another term for this 'other' thing, that I imagined as a kind of byname in this style? I hope it's clear what I am imagining, as I obviously don't have the term for it. Temerarius (talk) 23:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I've ever heard "specific epithet" before, but there are Homeric epithets, such as Wine-dark sea... AnonMoos (talk) 00:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe you already figured this out, but "specific" as used here is simply the adjectival form of "species". Specific, generic, familial, ordinal corresponding to species, genus, family, order. Not sure what they are for class, phylum, and kingdom.

I guess I'm not quite clear on what you mean by "this 'other' thing"; does the above help? --Trovatore (talk) 01:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Phylum's adjectival form is "phylar". Class and kingdom don't appear to have separate adjectival forms. In English, such gaps are corrected by using the noun form as a noun adjunct. --Jayron32 14:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Our article also gives the alternative name of linseed, which refers to the seeds of the flax plant. Alansplodge (talk) 08:01, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Definitely not clear on what you are looking for. As you found out, "specific epithet" is simply the second part of the binomial name of an organism. A specific epithet really only has meaning as part of that binomial, as two different genera (the plural form of "genus") can have species with the same specific epithet. For example Calathea louisae is a plant commonly grown in pots while Apatosaurus louisae is a dinosaur that has been extinct for about 150 million years. --Khajidha (talk) 14:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Confusion between the two might indeed be unfortunate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2021 (UTC)