Campylopterus
cam-pie-LOP-ter-us
Genus
curved wing
Literally: bent/curved wing
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| campyl- | curved, bent | Greek (campyl, -o) | stem campyl-, combining form campylo- |
| -o- | connecting vowel | ||
| -pter- | wing, feather | Greek (pter, -o) | stem pter- from Greek pteron |
| -us | nominative singular masculine ending | Latin (=us) | standard Latinized genus termination; grammatical gender: masculine |
The name is a single compound Greek noun Latinized as a second-declension masculine noun (nominative singular -us). The first element campylo- (curved/bent) is the adjectival modifier; the second element -pter- (wing) is the head noun. Together they form a noun in apposition serving as the genus name. No species epithet is present.
Pronunciation
- cam-pie-LOP-ter-us Antepenult stress: the penult vowel 'e' in '-ter-' is short and followed by only one consonant before the final -us, so stress falls on the antepenult syllable '-lop-', whose vowel is short (followed by a single consonant then two vowels where the first is not e/i/y).
Other readings
campyl- could theoretically be read as camp- + -yl- (a chemical suffix), but the biological and etymological context makes campyl- (Greek 'bent') unambiguous.
Campylopterus is a real hummingbird genus (Swainson, 1827), named for the distinctively bent or thickened primary wing-shafts of the males. The dictionary confirmed both 'campyl' (Greek: curved) and 'pter' (Greek: wing) in the dictionary. The connecting vowel -o- between campyl- and -pter- is standard Greek compounding practice; it is elided before the vowel-initial element in some compound forms, but here -o- is retained as campylo-pter.