Word.ws English Dictionary

caduceus

/kəˈdu.si.əs/

caduceus noun: the official wand carried by a herald in ancient Greece and Rome, specifically the one carried in mythology by Hermes, the messenger of the gods, usually represented with two snakes twined around it.

caduceus: the official wand carried by a herald in ancient Greece and Rome, specifically the one carried in...
Image: Rama Vector: Eliot Lash, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

caduceus (plural caducei)

  1. The official wand carried by a herald in ancient Greece and Rome, specifically the one carried in mythology by Hermes, the messenger of the gods, usually represented with two snakes twined around it.
    • Caduceus the rod of Mercury, / With which he wonts the Stygian realmes inuade […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    golden wand
  2. A symbol (☤) representing a staff with two snakes wrapped around it, used to indicate merchants and messengers. It is also sometimes incorrectly substituted for the rod of Asclepius as a symbol of medicine.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:caduceus.

caduceus meaning in Persian

caduceus in Persian

symbol
کادوسه kâduse

Synonyms of caduceus

Forms of caduceus

pluralcaducei

Origin of caduceus

Via Latin cādūceus, cādūceum, adaptation of Doric Ancient Greek καρύκειον (karúkeion, “herald’s wand or staff”). This and Attic Greek κηρύκειον (kērúkeion) are derived from κῆρυξ (kêrux, “herald, public messenger”). Related to κηρύσσω (kērússō, “to announce”).

Questions about caduceus

What does caduceus mean?
Caduceus means the official wand carried by a herald in ancient Greece and Rome, specifically the one carried in mythology by Hermes, the messenger of the gods, usually represented with two snakes twined around it.
What is caduceus in Persian?
Caduceus in Persian is کادوسه (kâduse). See Caduceus meaning in Persian.
What part of speech is caduceus?
Caduceus is a noun.
How do you pronounce caduceus?
Caduceus is pronounced /kəˈdu.si.əs/ (US).
What is the plural of caduceus?
The plural of caduceus is caducei.

Words near caduceus in the dictionary

  1. caducary
  2. caduce
  3. caducean
  4. caducei
  5. caduces
  6. caduceus
  7. caduciary
  8. caducibranch
  9. caducibranchiate
  10. caducibranchs
  11. caducicorn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caduceus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-caduceus.ogg.

Cite this entry: “caduceus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/caduceus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.