cyclops

See also: Cyclops

English

A cyclops from Urbano Monti's 1587 world map.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin cyclōps, from Ancient Greek Κύκλωψ (Kúklōps, “Cyclops ['round eyes']”). The sense for copepods is a semantic loan from translingual Cyclops.

Pronunciation

• (US) enPR: sī'klŏps, IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪˌklɑps/
• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: sī'klŏps, IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪˌklɒps/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

cyclops (plural cyclops or cyclopes or cyclopses)

1. (Greek mythology, Roman mythology) A one-eyed giant from Greek and Roman mythology.

   Alternative form: Cyclops

2. A one-eyed creature of any species.
   • 2026 February 23, Carl Zimmer, “The Rise of Eyes Began With Just One. Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 24 February 2026:

     Look at just about any vertebrate and you’ll see two eyes looking back at you. Falcons circling overhead have two eyes, just like hammerhead sharks roving through the ocean. Scientists have long puzzled over how the vertebrate eye first evolved. A pair of new studies suggest a strange beginning: Our invertebrate ancestors 560 million years ago were cyclopes, with a single eye at the top of their head, scientists now propose, that only later split in two. Charles Darwin fretted a lot about the exquisite complexity and sophistication of the vertebrate eye as he developed his theory of evolution. “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder,” he confided to his friend, the American botanist Asa Gray, in 1860. Somehow evolution had produced the eye from many parts, such as the lens and retina, through tiny changes through the generations. Darwin couldn’t say for sure what that sequence of changes was. But he was encouraged by the diversity of simpler eyes among invertebrates. Some are mere lumps of pigment that detect light; others are simple cups lacking lenses. “When I think of the fine known gradations,” Darwin wrote to Gray, “my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder.” Yet opponents of evolution continued to cast doubt on the idea that eyes could evolve. Even in the 1990s, creationists claimed that natural selection would need many billions of years to produce an eye — far more time than life has existed on Earth. Dan-E. Nilsson, a neurobiologist at Lund University in Sweden, grew so annoyed by these claims that he estimated how long it would actually take for a patch of light-sensitive cells to evolve into an image-forming eye. […] In 1994 he and Susanne Pelger, a colleague at Lund, concluded that an image-forming eye could evolve in just a few hundred thousand years. […] The model only addressed how the shape of eyes evolved. In actuality, many other changes occurred along the way. New proteins had to emerge that could bend light in the lens, for example, while others absorbed light in the retina. In 1994, scientists didn’t know enough about those microscopic details to develop a hypothesis for how they evolved as well. Three decades later, that’s no longer the case. “There’s lots of molecular data now that we can use that is extremely powerful,” Dr. Nilsson said. He and other vision experts have now joined forces to develop a hypothesis for how vertebrate eyes evolved. […] They and their colleagues unveiled their detailed scenario for the evolution of vertebrate eyes on Monday in the journal Current Biology.

3. (derogatory) A person with only one working eye.
4. (zoology) Any copepod in the genus Cyclops.
5. (horology) A small magnifying lens in the crystal of a watch to aid in reading the date.

Derived terms

• biclops
• cyclopamine
• cyclopean
• Cyclopean
• Cyclopean architecture
• cyclopess
• cyclopia
• cyclopic
• cyclops girl
• cycloptic

Translations

giant of mythology

• Albanian: katallan (sq) m, ciklop (sq) m
• Arabic: سَايْكْلُوب m (sayklub)
• Asturian: cíclope m
• Azerbaijani: təpəgöz
• Catalan: ciclop (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 獨眼巨人 / 独眼巨人 (dúyǎn jùrén), 庫克洛普斯 / 库克洛普斯 (kùkèluòpǔsī), 賽克洛斯 / 赛克洛斯 (sàikèluòsī)

• Czech: kyklop m
• Danish: kyklop c
• Esperanto: ciklopo
• Finnish: kyklooppi (fi)
• French: cyclope (fr) m
• Gagauz: tepegöz
• Galician: ciclope (gl) m
• German: Zyklop (de) m, Kyklop (de) m
• Greek: κύκλωπας m (kýklopas)

  Ancient Greek: Κύκλωψ m (Kúklōps)

• Hawaiian: kukelopa
• Hebrew: קיקלופ (he) (kiklop)
• Hungarian: ciklopsz, küklopsz (hu)
• Icelandic: kýklópi m, kýklópur m
• Ido: ciklopo (io)
• Italian: ciclope (it) m
• Japanese: キュクロープス (kyukurōpusu), キュクロプス (kyukuropusu), 独眼鬼 (dokuganki)
• Kazakh: циклоп (siklop)
• Korean: 키클롭스 (kikeullopseu), 퀴클롭스 (kwikeullopseu)
• Latin: cyclōps m
• Macedonian: киклоп m (kiklop)
• Marathi: साय्क्लॉप्स m (sāyklŏpsa)
• Norwegian:

  Nynorsk: kyklop m

• Polish: cyklop (pl) m
• Portuguese: ciclope (pt) m
• Romanian: ciclop (ro) m
• Russian: цикло́п (ru) m (ciklóp), кикло́п (ru) m (kiklóp)
• Slovak: kyklop, kyklóp, kyklóps
• Spanish: cíclope (es) m
• Swahili: siklopsi
• Swedish: cyklop (sv) c
• Turkish: siklops, tepegöz (tr), eğegöz, yalgızgöz

  Old Anatolian Turkish: دپه كوز (däpä göz)

  Ottoman Turkish: تپه گوز (tepe göz)

copepod

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 劍水蚤 / 剑水蚤 (jiànshuǐzǎo)

Latin

Etymology

From Ancient Greek Κύκλωψ (Kúklōps, “Cyclops”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈky.kɫoːps]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃiː.klops]

Noun

cyclōps m (genitive cyclōpis); third declension

1. A cyclops; a one-eyed giant from Greek and Roman mythology.

Declension

Third-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	cyclōps	cyclōpēs
genitive	cyclōpis	cyclōpum
dative	cyclōpī	cyclōpibus
accusative	cyclōpem	cyclōpēs
ablative	cyclōpe	cyclōpibus
vocative	cyclōps	cyclōpēs

Descendants

• Catalan: ciclop