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stingray

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Etymology and origin of the English word stingray

Confidence
Established
Formation
Compound
First attested
1620s John Smith More words from the 17th century
Ultimate origins
Old English stingOld French rai
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English sting
English stingray

Pronunciation

  • /ˈstɪŋˌɹeɪ/[1]

Etymology

It is a compound from English sting + ray2, the fish.[2][3][4] The fish is named for the barbed, venomous spine on its whiplike tail.[5][6] A variant, stingaree, is recorded from 1838 in Australia and the United States.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The fish: first in the writings of Captain John Smith, in the 1620s, in a passage warning of "Stingraies, whose tailes are very dangerous".[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to 1624,[5] the Shorter Oxford to the early 17th century,[3] and Dictionary.com to 1605–15.[4]

Semantic evolution

The Sailor's Word-Book (1867) describes the wound from its tail as painful but not truly poisonous, adding the sailors' belief that the pain lasted only until the next tide.[7] Modern dictionaries classify the fish in the family Dasyatidae and related families.[5][8][3]

Timeline

  • 1620s – a ray with a venomous spine on its tail.[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Any of various rays, mainly of the family Dasyatidae, with a flat body and a long whiplike tail bearing one or more barbed, venomous spines that can cause painful wounds: The divers kept clear of a stingray resting on the sand.[5][6][8][3]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ Smyth, W. H. (1867), The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, London: Blackie and Son
  8. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
Cite this entry

“Stingray.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/stingray. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·