Erythropitta
eh-RITH-roh-PIT-uh
Genus
the red pitta — a genus of brilliantly coloured ground-birds in the family Pittidae
Literally: red pitta
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| erythro- | red | Greek (erythr, -o) | standard combining form erythro- (erythr- + connecting vowel -o-) |
| pitta | pitch (the substance); in New Latin: a kind of bird (the pittas, family Pittidae) | Greek / New Latin (pitt, =a) | head noun; -a is the standard New Latin nominative singular feminine ending; the bird name derives from Telugu 'pitta' (small bird), adopted into NL taxonomy through Greek orthography |
Erythropitta is a compound genus name formed from the Greek combining form erythro- ('red') joined directly to the New Latin head noun pitta ('a pitta-bird'). No connecting vowel is needed between erythro- and pitta because the combining form already ends in -o-. The name functions as a feminine Latin noun in apposition: a subgenus or genus of pitta-birds distinguished by their red colouration. It was split from the larger genus Pitta to group the predominantly red-bellied Asian pittas.
Pronunciation
- eh-RITH-roh-PIT-uh Five syllables: eh | RITH | roh | PIT | uh. The penult syllable 'pit' contains a short vowel followed by a doubled consonant (tt — two consonants), so stress falls on the PENULT by rule 5. Final -a is pronounced 'uh'.
Other readings
A superficially plausible but incorrect segmentation would read 'opi' (opium/poppy-juice) in the middle — this is a dictionary artefact from the overlap of the -o- of erythro- and the initial p-i of pitta, and should be discarded.
The word 'pitta' as a bird-name ultimately traces to a Telugu word for 'small bird', but it entered scientific Latin nomenclature spelled as if Greek (pitt, =a), and the dictionary records it under NL usage. The dictionary entry for pitt/pitta lists both its original Greek sense ('pitch, the resinous substance') and its New Latin ornithological sense ('a kind of bird'); only the NL sense is relevant here. The spurious 'opi' match returned by the dictionary (meaning 'poppy juice / opium') spans the junction of erythro- and pitta and is not a real segment of this name. Erythropitta was established as a genus (split from Pitta) by Johansson et al. 2013, grouping red-bellied pittas of Asia and Australasia.