echinococcus
/ɪˌkaɪ.nəˈkɑk.əs/obsolete
echinococcus is a noun meaning “A parasite of humans and of many domestic and wild animals, thought to be the larval stage of Echinococcus granulosus, that forms compound cysts or…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-C-H-I-N-O-C-O-C-C-U-S and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 32 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of echinococcus is echinococci.
What does echinococcus mean?
noun
- 1
archaicA parasite of humans and of many domestic and wild animals, thought to be the larval stage of Echinococcus granulosus, that forms compound cysts or tumours (called hydatid cysts) in various organs, but especially in the liver and lungs.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce echinococcus?
- US /ɪˌkaɪ.nəˈkɑk.əs/
Echinococcus has 5 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is echinococcus?
Echinococcus appears about once in every 32 million words in written English, the 173,967th 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).
Echinococcus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense parasite:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | échinocoque |
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 echinococcus come from?
Borrowed from translingual Echinococcus, from echino- (“sea urchin, prickle”) + -coccus (“spherical microorganism”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).