A spelling bee word with quite a few cognates. Byssoid means filamentous. A byssus
was originally the word for a ship's anchor rope. A place too deep for an anchor rope
was an abyss. Ropes are (sometimes)made out of cotton, and workers making it inhale a lot of
cotton dust and develop byssinosis, a lung disease called brown lung disease. Workers
in sugar manufacture inhale dust of sugar cane fibers and get another brown lung disease
called bagassosis.But byssus is used now mostly to describe the foot by which mussels
attach to rocks.