Word of the Day

: April 16, 2008

semelparous

adjective seh-MEL-puh-rus

What It Means

: reproducing or breeding only once in a lifetime

semelparous in Context

Each year the semelparous salmon return to the stream where they hatched to spawn, and they die soon thereafter.

Did You Know?

The combining form "-parous" was first used in English by the 17th-century physician and writer Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote about organisms that were "multiparous" ("producing more than one at a birth"), "oviparous" ("producing eggs that develop outside the maternal body"), and "viviparous" ("producing living young instead of eggs from within the body"). The suffix is based on the Latin verb "parere," meaning "to give birth to," which is also a relative of the word that gave us "parent." "Semelparous," the youngest offspring of "-parous," was born in 1954. Its other parent is "semel," the Latin word for "once."