Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Lynx
/lɪŋks/noun
A short-tailed wild cat with tufted ears and wide, snow-carrying paws.
The Greek roots
λύγξ
lýnx
lynx, wild cat
Literally: “the bright-eyed one”
Follow a root:λύγξ1 word
The story of the word
The Greek name is usually traced to a root meaning light or brightness, pointing at the animal's reflective eyes, and the ancients credited it with sight that went through walls — Lynceus, sharpest-eyed of the Argonauts, carries the same name. Theophrastus reported that its urine hardened into a gem called lyncurium, which he was passing on as hearsay. Hevelius named the constellation Lynx in 1687 and remarked that you would need the eyes of one to find it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
A lynx crossed the forest track ahead of the car and was gone.
Lynx were reintroduced to the valley in the 1970s.