Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Antelope
/ˈæntɪloʊp/noun
A fast-running hoofed grazing animal of Africa and Asia, with unbranched horns.
The Greek roots
ἀνθόλοψ
anthólops
a horned beast, sense unknown
Literally: “sense of the Greek word not recovered”
Follow a root:ἀνθόλοψ1 word
The story of the word
Eustathius, in the fourth century, described the anthólops as a fierce beast on the banks of the Euphrates with saw-edged horns that cut down trees. Medieval bestiaries copied him and heralds put the creature on coats of arms, tusked and impossible, long before the name touched a real animal. Naturalists attached it to the living gazelles and their kin in the eighteenth century. What the Greek word first meant is unknown, and the reading flower-eye, from ánthos and óps, is a guess made long after the fact.
- How it travelled
- Late Greek → Medieval Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
In a sentence
A herd of antelope moved off the track without hurrying.