nekton
noun
nekton is a noun meaning “All organisms in the ocean that are capable of swimming independently of currents” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled N-E-K-T-O-N and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 68 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of nekton is nektons.
What does nekton mean?
noun
- 1
All organisms in the ocean that are capable of swimming independently of currents.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce nekton?
Nekton has 2 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 nekton
- nektons plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is nekton?
Nekton appears about once in every 68 million words in written English, the 258,950th 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).
Nekton in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense organisms in the ocean:
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 nekton come from?
From German Nekton which was coined in 1890 by Ernst Haeckel. By surface analysis, Ancient Greek νηκτός (nēktós, “swimming”) + -on.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).