The scientific Latin term octopus was derived from Ancient Greek ὀκτώπους (oktōpous). 35 It is a compound form of ὀκτώ (oktō, «eight») and πούς (pous, «foot»). 3

In ancient Greek, the octopus was called polypous or polupous (many-footed). 1 This word was used by Pliny and Aristotle and later borrowed into Latin as polypus. 1

The scientist who is probably most responsible for standardizing the name in common usage was the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who used «octopus» in his work on taxonomy, Systema Naturae (10th ed., 1758). 1