Tyrannosaurus
/tɪˌrænəˈsɔːrəs/noun
A large two-legged predatory dinosaur of the late Cretaceous, best known from the species Tyrannosaurus rex.
The Greek roots
Literally: “tyrant lizard”
The story of the word
Henry Fairfield Osborn named it in 1905, with rex added in Latin in case anyone missed the point. τύραννος was probably not a Greek word to begin with and carried no automatic insult: it meant a ruler who took power outside the hereditary line, which several Greek cities regarded as an improvement. Osborn named a second specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in the same paper before working out that both were the same animal, so the world came close to growing up saying dynamosaur.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1905
Same family
In a sentence
The tyrannosaurus skeleton in the atrium is a cast; the real bones are downstairs in drawers.
He can spell tyrannosaurus and not his own surname.