Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Hyena
/haɪˈiːnə/noun
A heavy-jawed scavenging carnivore of Africa and Asia with a sloping back.
The Greek roots
ὕαινα
hýaina
hyena
ὗς
hŷs
pig, swine
Literally: “the pig-like one”
The story of the word
Greeks named it from the bristly ridge running down its spine, which looked to them like a hog's mane, and built the name on ὗς with a feminine ending. Aristotle had to argue in print against the belief that hyenas change sex from year to year; the female's anatomy mimics the male's closely enough to explain how the story started. Pliny repeated it anyway. The laugh is real, made when the animal is frightened or squabbling over a carcass.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
A hyena worked the edge of the camp all night.
Hyenas hunt far more than the old films admitted.