Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A manuscript-name of an animal or of a plant; an unpublished name.

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Examples

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  • chironym – a manuscript name for a species, having no taxonomic validity until published

    Edited: "a manuscript name" (instead of 'named'). Thanks, Mollusque!

    July 19, 2008

  • This is correct for botany but not for zoology. "Valid" in reference to a name means "properly published" in botany, but "correct" in zoology. (Note that "named" should be "name").

    July 19, 2008

  • The Century Dictionary glosses chironym as "A manuscript-name of an animal or of a plant; an unpublished name" and gives a reference to Coues, The Awk, I. 321. Coues is presumably Elliot Coues in a review of whose Coues Checklist of North American Birds in The Dial (Nov., 1882) he is quoted as follows (in what we may take as an example of a chironym): “Though the Great Awk is extinct in North America, and has doubtless disappeared from the face of the earth, we still keep the place in memoriam of this ‘most honorable and ancient fowle.’”

    May 25, 2010