Etymologically
Log in

dinosaur

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 22 October 2026 at 21:39. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈdaɪnəsɔː(ɹ)/[1]
  • US: /ˈdaɪnəsoɹ/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin Dinosauria, with the ending dropped,[2][3] or dinosaurus;[4][5][6] the scientific name was coined by the English anatomist Sir Richard Owen in 1841,[7][8][9] from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinós, “terrible, fearsome”) and σαῦρος (saûros, “lizard”).[7][4][10][6] Barnhart relates the first element to Greek words for fear and traces it to the root Proto-Indo-European *dwei-,[4] and Ayto notes that the same base produced English dire.[11] The word for a lizard is of unknown origin.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A member of the group of extinct reptiles, many very large, that dominated life on land in the Mesozoic era: Etymonline, Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date the word to 1841,[7][4][3] and the OED's first example is from Owen's report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, published in 1842.[2][12]

Semantic evolution

Ayto points out that the name, "terrible lizard", is something of a misnomer, as dinosaurs are not closely related to modern lizards.[11] The figurative sense, a person or thing that is out of date or unable to adapt to change, is recorded by the OED from 1899, in the Washington Post;[2] Etymonline dates it to 1952, and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins says people have been called dinosaurs in this sense since the 1950s.[7][9] Green's Dictionary of Slang records dinosaur for the penis in African American slang from 1980.[13]

Timeline

  • 1841 – coined by Richard Owen.[7][4][3]
  • 1842 – first example in print in the OED.[2]
  • 1899 – figurative, an outdated person or thing.[2]
  • 1952 – Etymonline's date for the figurative sense.[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. Any of a large group of extinct reptiles, often of enormous size, that lived on land during the Mesozoic era.
  2. A person, institution or thing regarded as old-fashioned and unable to adapt to change: The old mainframe had become a dinosaur.

Word family

  • dinosauric
  • dinosaurian
  • -saur
  • duck-billed dinosaur
  • dire
  • brontosaurus
  • tyrannosaurus
  • saurian

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  9. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  12. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  13. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com