Anthracomarti

plural noun

An·thra·co·mar·ti

: an order of carboniferous arthropods related to the spiders

anthracomartian

¦⸗⸗(ˌ)⸗¦märshən

adjective or noun

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from New Latin, plural of Anthracomartus, type genus, from anthraco- anthraco- + -martus, element of unknown meaning and origin

Note: The genus Anthracomartus was introduced by the German arachnologist Ferdinand Karsch (1853-1936) in "Ueber ein neues Spinnenthier aus der schlesischen Steinkohle und die Arachniden der Steinkohlenformation überhaupt," Zeitschrift der Deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft, vol. 34 (1882), pp. 556-61. Karsch gives no clue to the meaning of -martus; one possibility is a Latinized rendering of Greek mártys, "witness," but this would be both morphologically and orthographically peculiar.