reptatorial

English edit

WOTD – 2 April 2021

From reptatory (“crawling, creeping”) +‎ -al (suffix forming adjectives). Reptatory is probably derived from New Latin reptatorius (used in the binomial nomenclature of species), from Latin rēptātus (“on which one has crawled; where one has swum”) + -tōrius (suffix forming adjectives);^[1] rēptātus is the perfect passive participle of rēptō (“to crawl or creep (over or through)”), the frequentative form of rēpō (“to crawl, creep”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reh₁p-.