Hello to you, you word nerd! Welcome to today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Get your wings out, but don’t go anywhere, because today we are exploring the word ‘cassowary’.
Cassowaries are a flightless species of bird that are native to the tropical forest of New Guinea, East Nusa Tenggara, the Maluku Islands, and northeastern Australia. They are characterised as a ratite without a keel on their sternum bone, and are the third-tallest and second-heaviest living bird in the world, smaller only than the emu and ostrich. They have often been labelled ‘the world’s most dangerous bird’ as they are capable of inflicting serious or fatal injuries to both dogs and humans.
But back to the language! Cassowary has been identified as French or Dutch from 1610, but originates from the Malay ‘kasuari’. ‘Suari’ in Malay, is translated as ‘island’. In English, the only other derivative is a tree - ‘casuarina’. Casuarina is a genus of 17 tree species native to Australia, India, southeast Asia, islands in the Pacific Ocean and eastern Africa. Interestingly, the derivative alludes to the similarities between the bird's feathers and the plant's foliage, as they do look quite similar! However, in current standard Malay, the casuarina tree is called ‘rhu’.
The genus Casuarius was erected by the French scientist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Ornithologie published in 1760. Today, there are only three species of casuarius alive. The fourth, Casuarius lydekkeri, or the pygmy cassowary, is now extinct. The type species, the southern cassowary, is scientifically referred to as casuarius casuarius. Try saying that ten times fast!
Isn’t language wonderful?
