Dragon
/ˈdræɡən/noun
A large mythical reptile, usually winged and fire-breathing.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the sharp-eyed one”
The story of the word
Drákōn is built on a verb for looking hard, dérkomai, so the creature is named for its stare rather than its size, and Greek applied the word to big snakes as readily as to monsters. The dragon guarding the golden fleece never sleeps, which fits. English has an unlikely descendant in rankle, to fester, which came through Old French from dracunculus, little dragon, the medieval name for a spreading sore. Draconian belongs to a different Drakōn, the Athenian whose laws of the 620s BC punished nearly everything with death.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Every dragon in the book has a different set of rules about fire.