Chalcopsitta
kal-kop-SIT-uh
Genus
copper parrot — referring to the coppery or bronze-tinged plumage of these lories
Literally: copper parrot
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| chalco- | copper | Greek (chalc, -o) | combining form chalco- (chalc- + connecting vowel -o-) |
| psitta | a parrot | Greek (psitt, -ac, =acus) | stem psitt- with feminine nominative singular ending -a, forming the genus name; full classical form is psittacus |
A compound noun in the nominative singular, treated as feminine (as is conventional for genus names ending in -a). The first element chalco- is the Greek combining form of khalcos 'copper', joined by the inherent connecting vowel -o- to the parrot-stem psitta-. The whole word means 'copper parrot'. Chalcopsitta is a genus of lories (family Psittaculidae) whose members have areas of coppery, bronze, or dark-metallic coloration.
Pronunciation
- kal-kop-SIT-uh Four syllables: kal-kop-sit-uh. The penult vowel (i in 'sit') is short but is followed by two consonants (tt), so by penult-stress rule 5 the penult is stressed. Initial ch = hard k; initial ps the p is retained as it is in the middle of a compound (ps falls inside the word after chalco-), but by convention in English the initial cluster is simplified to k; final -a = 'uh'.
Commonly: kal-kop-SIT-uh (consistent with scholarly and avicultural usage)
Other readings
A secondary split could read chalc- + opsi- + -tta, yielding 'copper appearance', but this is less convincing because psitt- 'parrot' is a clean and meaningful match for the remaining letters and the taxon is indeed a parrot genus.
The dictionary entry for psitt gives the combining forms psitt-, -ac-, =acus (the full form psittacus). In Chalcopsitta the stem appears as psitta-, the feminine nominative truncation used to form the genus name. Chalcopsitta (Lesson, 1830) contains the black lory and allies; the name alludes to the coppery-red patches prominent in several species.