Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Saurian
/ˈsɔːriən/adjective
Belonging to or resembling lizards and other large reptiles.
The Greek roots
σαῦρος
saûros
lizard
Literally: “lizard-like”
Follow a root:σαῦρος15 words
The story of the word
Every dinosaur name ending in -saurus carries the Greek for lizard, and so does this adjective for the whole reptilian look. Richard Owen coined Dinosauria in 1842 from δεινός, terrible or awe-inspiring, plus σαῦρος. The irony arrived later: birds, not lizards, are the surviving dinosaurs, so the name was wrong about the family from the first day it was published.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- early 19th century
Same family
dinosaursauropodtyrannosaurusplesiosaur
In a sentence
He watched us with a slow saurian blink and did not move off the rock.
The saurian fossils in the cliff draw collectors every winter storm.