Pleurodelinae
| Newt Temporal range: Late Cretaceous–Recent |
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| Kaiser's spotted newt | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Amphibia |
| Order: | Urodela |
| Family: | Salamandridae |
| Subfamily: | Pleurodelinae |
| Genera | |
14–17 extant and six fossil genera, see text
A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae, also called eft during its terrestrial juvenile phase. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, alternating between aquatic and terrestrial habitats over the year, sometimes even staying in the water full-time. Not all aquatic salamanders are considered newts, however. The more than 100 known species of newts are found in North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia. Newts metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages: aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile (eft), and adult. Adult newts have lizard-like bodies and return to the water every year to breed, otherwise living in humid, cover-rich land habitats.
Newts are threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation and pollution. Several species are endangered, and at least one species, the Yunnan lake newt, has gone extinct recently.
The Old English name of the animal was efte, efeta (of unknown origin), resulting in Middle English eft; this word was transformed irregularly into euft, evete, or ewt(e). The initial 'n' was added from the indefinite article 'an' by provection (juncture loss) ("an eft" -> "a n'eft" -> ...) by the early 15th century. The form 'newt' appears to have arisen as a dialectal variant of eft in Staffordshire, but entered Standard English by the Early Modern period (used by Shakespeare in Macbeth iv.1). The regular form eft, now only used for newly metamorphosed specimens, survived alongside newt, especially in composition, the larva being called "water-eft" and the mature form "land-eft" well into the 18th century, but use of the simplex "eft" as equivalent to "water-eft" has been in use since at least the 17th century.
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