boa

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin boa (“a large snake; a water snake”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} a word Pliny uses in his “Natural History”, of unknown origin.^{[2][3][4][8][9][10]} Pliny and St Jerome connected it, for different reasons, with bos (“ox”),^[2][11] and in medieval folk etymology it was linked with the Greek word for ox.^[3] Partridge suggested cattle coming to drink at a pool,^[12] and Weekley an exclamation of terror.^[11] The modern zoological use is from New Latin, the name of the genus.^[8][7][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A large snake: before 1398, in John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De Proprietatibus Rerum.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The medieval word named a large serpent known from Pliny.^[4][3] By the 1620s it was applied to the large non-venomous snakes of tropical South America that kill their prey by constriction,^[3] and Hoad and Collins date the modern zoological use to the 19th century.^[8][13] The name boa constrictor, given by Linnaeus, is found in English by 1808, after German from the 1770s and French from the 1780s;^[3][11] Weekley notes that it was often wrongly applied to much larger snakes.^[11] In heraldry the word was used of a large snake as a charge (1572).^[2] From 1836, in Dickens's Sketches by Boz, a boa was also a long snake-like wrap of fur, later of feathers, worn round a woman's throat.^[2][3][11]

Timeline

• before 1398 – a large snake.^[2][4]
• 1572 – in heraldry, a large snake as a charge (obsolete).^[2]
• 1620s – the large constricting snakes of tropical America.^[3]
• 1808 – boa constrictor.^[3]
• 1836 – a long wrap of fur or feathers worn round the neck.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large non-venomous snake of the family Boidae, found mostly in Central and South America, that kills its prey by constriction.^[13][7][2]
2. Loosely, any large constricting snake, such as a python or anaconda.^[7][6]
3. A long, fluffy scarf of fur or feathers worn round the neck: She wore a pink feather boa to the party.^[13][7][2]

Related words

• boa constrictor

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
13. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins