Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Panther
/ˈpænθər/noun
A leopard, especially a black one, and in American use a cougar.
The Greek roots
πᾶν
pân
all
θήρ
thḗr
wild beast
Literally: “all-beast”
The story of the word
Greeks heard all and beast in πάνθηρ, and medieval bestiaries built on that reading: the panther supposedly slept for three days, then woke with breath so sweet that every animal followed it except the dragon. Most philologists now think the word was borrowed from an eastern language and only looked Greek by accident, which makes the whole bestiary tradition a footnote to a mishearing. English took it from Old French about 1300.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1300
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
pantheonpanoramapanacea
In a sentence
A black panther is a leopard with too much pigment, not a separate species.
The panther crossed the road ahead of the truck and was gone.