mammal
UK[ˈmæməl]US[ˈmæməl]
n
A warm-blooded animal that has hair or fur, and the females of which produce milk to feed their young.
Etymology
The word 'mammal' originates from the modern Latin term 'Mammalia', the class name for these animals, coined by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Linnaeus derived it from the Latin 'mamma', meaning 'breast, teat, udder', which itself has roots in the Proto-Indo-European nursery word 'mā-mā', an infantile sound for mother. The choice of this root directly reflects the defining biological characteristic of the group: the possession of mammary glands for secreting milk to nourish offspring. Thus, the term's scientific logic is elegantly literal, moving from the ancient concept of nourishment at the breast to the modern taxonomic classification.
Analysis
The word is a simplex loanword from Latin. It is not productively segmented into meaningful sub-parts in modern English spelling.
Examples
Humans, whales, and bats are all types of mammal.
The mother mammal carefully nursed her newborn pups.
This fossil provides evidence of an early mammal living alongside dinosaurs.