artiodactyl
/ˌɑːtɪəʊˈdaktɪl/noun
artiodactyl is a noun meaning “Any ungulate mammal with an even number of toes and belonging to the Artiodactyla, including pigs, sheep, deer, cattle, and most grazing animals. In…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-R-T-I-O-D-A-C-T-Y-L and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 85 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of artiodactyl is artiodactyls.
What does artiodactyl mean?
noun
- 1
Any ungulate mammal with an even number of toes and belonging to the Artiodactyla, including pigs, sheep, deer, cattle, and most grazing animals. In contrast, horses have an odd number of toes and as such are not Artiodactyla, but Perissodactyla.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce artiodactyl?
- UK /ˌɑːtɪəʊˈdaktɪl/
Artiodactyl has 5 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of artiodactyl
- artiodactyls plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is artiodactyl?
Artiodactyl appears about once in every 85 million words in written English, the 293,966th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Artiodactyl in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense any ungulate mammal with an even number of toes:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | artiodactyle |
| German | Paarhufer, Paarzeher, paarzehiges Huftier |
| Portuguese | artiodáctilo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does artiodactyl come from?
Learned borrowing from taxonomic name Artiodactyla, from Ancient Greek ἄρτιος (ártios, “even”) + δάκτυλος (dáktulos, “finger, toe”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).