living fossil
/ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈfɑsl̩/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.97 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The coelacanth and the dawn redwood are living fossils."
- "[I]n fresh water we find some of the most anomalous forms now known in the world, as the Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, which, like fossils, connect to a certain extent orders now widely separated in the natural scale. These anomalous forms may almost be called living fossils; they have endured to the present day, from having inhabited a confined area, and from having thus been exposed to less severe competition."
- "The Gingko, whose single existing species was aptly termed a living fossil by [Charles] Darwin and which survived to modern times only in eastern Asia and is now a prized ornamental tree in all temperate countries, has an ancestral history that goes back to remote geologic time."
- "It features in textbooks as well, a prime example of a "living fossil", a reminder of past glories now hanging on in a last-ditch action against final extinction. But is nautilus really an anachronism?"
- "Angus: Impossible! If what you say is true, he'd have to be thousands of years old. / Rothie: Astounding! The age-o-meter dates your particles all the way back to 25 B.A., twenty-five years before Aku enslaved the Earth. You, my friend, are a living fossil. / Jack: So the question is not where I am but when I am. […] The spell Aku cast must have ripped me from my own time and flung me into the distant future."
- "Crocodiles are living fossils that haven’t changed their appearance much in millions of years."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈfɑsl̩/
- British English: /ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈfɒsl̩/