Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Scorpion
/ˈskɔːrpiən/noun
An arachnid with pincers and a segmented tail ending in a venomous sting.
The Greek roots
σκορπίος
skorpíos
scorpion
Literally: “the tailed stinger”
Follow a root:σκορπίος1 word
The story of the word
σκορπίος named the animal and then a Roman torsion catapult, small, accurate and lethal from behind, which the engineers evidently thought was funny. Latin borrowed the Greek word whole, Old French passed it on, and English had scorpion by 1200. The constellation carries the name because Greek myth sets the scorpion that killed Orion in the sky, still chasing him round it.
- 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
Scorpioscorpioid
In a sentence
Shake out your boots: a scorpion will take any dark warm space it finds.