like many scientific words, comes from Greek. It is made up of the Greek prefixamphi-,meaning "both" or "double," and the Greek wordbios,meaning "life." Both these elements are widely used in other scientific words in English:bios,for example, is also seen in words likebiology, antibiot...
355. The use of both English amphibian and Latin amphibius with varying gender and number to refer to animals living on both land and sea (and in figurative senses) can be found much earlier. First Known Use 1749, in the meaning defined at sense 1 Time Traveler The first known use of...