Monday, November 13, 2017

Interesting words: Eusocial

Eusocial is an adjective meaning, according to Merriam_Webster:

living in a cooperative group in which usually one female and several males are reproductively active and the nonbreeding individuals care for the young or protect and provide for the group
It's a relatively recent word, its first known use was only in 1966.  The best known eusocial animals are various species of ants, but there are quite a few other examples, including some bees, wasps, termites, aphids, shrimp, mole-rats, meerkats and mongooses (mongeese?).  E.O. Wilson, in his book The Social Conquest of the Earth posits that humans can be eusocial but this is rather controversial. (Nor is it the only controversy Wilson has spawned).

The eu- prefix to "social" is from the Greek word  εὖ eu, which means "good".

Not surprisingly, both eusocial and eusociality (its adjectival form) are quite rare words.  The former occurs about 1 in 16.7 million words, the latter 1 in 23 million or so. Both hit peaks around 1994, although the Ngram viewer time window does not include the publication of Wilson's book.

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