Animalcule

Animalcule ('little animal', from Latin animal + the diminutive suffix -culum) is an older term for a microscopic animal or protozoan. The concept appears to have been proposed at least as early as around 30 BC, as evidenced by this translation from Marcus Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres: Animalcule ('little animal', from Latin animal + the diminutive suffix -culum) is an older term for a microscopic animal or protozoan. The concept appears to have been proposed at least as early as around 30 BC, as evidenced by this translation from Marcus Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres: 'Note also if there be any swampy ground, both for the reasons given above, and because certain minute animals, invisible to the eye, breed there, and, borne by the air, reach the inside of the body by way of the mouth and nose, and cause diseases which are difficult to be rid of.'