marsupium

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the external abdominal pouch in which a female marsupial carries and nurses its undeveloped young

   The newborn joey crawled through its mother's fur and entered the marsupium.

2. 2
   noun

   a brood pouch or comparable structure used to hold eggs or young in certain fishes, crustaceans, and other animals

   The female crustacean carried developing eggs inside a protective marsupium.

Borrowed from Latin marsupium, from Greek marsippion, a diminutive of marsippos ("pouch"). Zoologists applied the classical bag word to mammalian pouches and then to analogous brood chambers in other animals.

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