A cyclops is a giant from Greek myth with one eye in the middle of its forehead. The famous one is Polyphemus, who traps Odysseus in a cave and is blinded with a sharpened stake — a story most learners meet long before they meet the word.
Two things about it are worth knowing. The plural is Cyclopes, said cy-CLO-peez, not cyclopses, and almost nobody gets that right first time. And the word has escaped the myth: biologists use it for a tiny freshwater animal with a single eye spot, and a doctor may use cyclopia for a rare birth condition. Outside those, it is always the giant.
1nouncyclopsIn Greek myth, a giant with a single eye in the middle of its forehead.
“The cyclops rolled a stone across the mouth of the cave.”
synonyms: giant
2nountinyA tiny freshwater creature with one eye spot, common in ponds.
“Under the microscope the pond water was full of cyclops.”
cyclops is a creature from myth.
Ancient Greek Kyklops is kyklos, a circle, plus ops, an eye — round-eye. The name is a description, and it is doing exactly the work a name in a story should do: you are told what to picture before you are told anything else about him.
Proto-Indo-European
*klep-
Translingual
Cyclops
Ancient Greek
Κύκλωψ — Cyclops ['round eyes']
Latin
cyclōps
English, today
cyclops
Latin cyclōps, from Ancient Greek Κύκλωψ (“Cyclops ['round eyes']”). The sense for copepods is a Translingual Cyclops.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Myths & Legends, Fairy Tales & Folklore