Quote Originally Posted by Mikawa Ossan View Post
I have always though that words like "centipede" and "octopus" were very childish English words. Not to mention "millipede". I guess English doesn't care enough about animals with more than 4 feet.
I understand you claim about the centipede (which does not necesaarily have 100 legs), but octopuses do have 8 legs. Nevertheless, there are thousands of species of centipedes/millipedes, with a total number of legs varying between 80 and 400 legs for common species (up to 200 for centipedes), so in some cases the term centipede can actually be correct. I suppose it is for the sake of convenience that we have not given different names to each species according to their exact number of legs !