anaconda

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin anacandaia (“python”), altered in a way that has not been explained,^[2][3][4] a name the naturalist John Ray recorded in 1693 for a large snake of Ceylon.^[5][6][7] Ray gave it as the anacandaia of the Ceylonese, "he that crushes the limbs of buffaloes and yoke beasts".^[8][5] The origin of Ray's word is disputed, and the OED notes that it is not a local name in Sri Lanka and has not been satisfactorily explained from Sinhalese or Tamil.^[8][9] The view most dictionaries give is that it comes from Sinhalese හෙනකඳයා (henakandayā, “whip snake”),^{[6][10][2][4][1]} literally "lightning stem", from හෙණ (heṇa, “lightning, thunderbolt”) and කඳ (kanda, “stem, trunk, body”);^{[11][10][1][12]} the Sinhalese name belonged to a slender green whip snake, which was taken for a name of the python.^[10][5] The American Heritage Dictionary traces the two Sinhalese parts back through Middle Indic to Sanskrit words for thunderbolt and shoulder,^[11] and Merriam-Webster takes kanda as probably from Sanskrit, perhaps of Dravidian origin.^[10] Weekley reports the suggestion that the mistake came from a confusion of labels in the Leyden Museum, Ray's source.^[13] The OED instead compares a Tamil phrase meaning "having killed an elephant", suggested by Colonel Yule.^[8][9] Partridge notes that the “Enciclopedia Italiana” places its origin in Surinam instead,^[14] and Hobson-Jobson at first supposed it South American, a view it gave up on finding the name in Ray.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A very large and terrible snake of Ceylon: 1768, in a fictitious letter in the Scots Magazine based on Ray, which says that the Ceylonese call the creature Anaconda.^[8] Barnhart and Etymonline also date the word to 1768,^[6][9] but Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1748 for this first sense.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The 1797 Encyclopaedia Britannica still described the anaconda as a huge Ceylonese snake that often swallowed the unfortunate traveller alive.^[5][15] In 1802 the French naturalist François Marie Daudin applied the name, as Boa anacondo, to a large South American boa, now Eunectes murinus,^[6][5] perhaps by a wrong identification or a mistake about where a specimen came from;^[8] that use has stuck,^[5] and the snake is called sucuriù or sucuriuba in Brazil.^[8][9][7] Cuvier's Règne Animal of 1829 has it as l'anacondo.^[7] The word was also used loosely of any large snake that crushes its prey,^[8] and Weekley found it used vaguely of any boa or python.^[13] In slang it has meant a mixture of strong beer and rough cider (from 1996) and, among New Zealand teenagers, the penis.^[16]

Timeline

• 1768 – a very large snake of Ceylon, probably a python.^[8][6]
• 1802 – applied by Daudin to the large South American boa.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A very large, nonvenomous, semiaquatic snake of tropical South America (Eunectes murinus), of the boa family, that kills its prey by constriction.^[17][10][18]
2. Any large snake that crushes its prey.^[8][13]
3. (archaic) A large python of Sri Lanka.^[10][8]

Related words

• boa
• python

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
6. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d Yule, Henry; Burnell, A. C. (1903), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, new ed. by William Crooke, London: John Murray
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
15. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
17. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
18. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press