dragon

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A mythical monster traditionally represented as a gigantic reptile having a lion's claws, the tail of a serpent, wings, and a scaly skin.
2. n. A fiercely vigilant or intractable person.
3. n. Something very formidable or dangerous.
4. n. Any of various lizards, such as the Komodo dragon or the flying lizard.
5. n. Archaic A large snake or serpent.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A fabulous animal common to the conceptions of many primitive races and times, or, as in the Bible an indefinite creature of great size or fierceness. When described or depicted, it is represented as either; monstrous serpent or a lizard (like an exaggerated crocodile), or a compound of both, or (as in heraldry) as a combination of mammalian and reptilian characters; but always as winged, with fiery eyes, crested head, and terrible claws. It is often represented as bloodred and spouting fire, and sometime with several heads, like the Hydra and in the myths of the Scandinavian and other races, dragons are often the guardians of treasures, etc. The killing of a dragon was reckoned among the greatest feats heroes in both ancient and medieval times; thus, the legend of St. George and the dragon is one of the most celebrated in Christian literature. The dragon is the imperial emblem of China, and is regarded by the Chinese as a sort of divinity, but by other peoples generally as the type and embodiment of fierceness and cruelty or watchful malice. In the Apocalypse “the dragon, that old serpent” is a synonym of Satan (Rev. xx. 2). In the Old Testament it is either a large land-animal or a great marine fish (Isa. xxxiv. 13—revised version, jackal; Ps. lxxiv. 13—revised version, dragon), a venomous land-serpent (Ps. xci. 13—revised version, serpent), or the crocodile (Ezek. xxix. 3—revised version, dragon). The same Hebrew word, thannim, is also sometimes translated whale (Gen. i. 21—revised version, sea-monster; Job vii. 12—revised version sea-monster). The extinct pterodactyl comes nearest o all known creatures to the most prevalent conception of: dragon.
2. n. In zoöl.: A lizard of the genus Draco, specifically called the flying-dragon. It is a harm less creature, of about 4 inches in length of head and body, with a long slender tail, making the whole length about 10 inches. It has a large frill on each side of the body, formed of skin stretched over six elongated hinder ribs, which like a parachute sustain the creature in the air for a few moments. The structure is not a wing, and the animal does not properly fly, the arrangement somewhat resembling that in the flying-squirrel, flying-lemur, etc. The species are con-fined to the old world.
3. n. Any one of the monitor-lizards.
4. n. In ornithology, a kind of carrier-pigeon. Also called dragoon.
5. n. A fierce, violent person, male or female; now, more generally (from the part of guardian often played by the dragon in mythology), a spiteful, watchful woman; a duenna.
6. n. [capitalized] An ancient northern constellation, Draco. The figure is that of a serpent with several small coils. It appears at a very ancient date to have had wings in the space now occupied by the Little Bear.
7. n. A short firearm used by dragoons in the seventeenth century, described as having a barrel 16 inches long, with a large bore.
8. n. An old kind of standard or military ensign, so called because it was decorated with a dragon painted or embroidered upon it, or because it consisted (like the Anglo-Saxon standard at Hastings, as seen in the Bayeux tapestry) of a figure of a dragon carried upon a staff. A similar standard was in use as late as the reign of Richard I. in England, and is especially mentioned as being in his crusading army. Also called dragon-standard. See drake, 2.
9. n. A name given to various araceous plants, as in England to Arum maculatum; the brown dragon, Arisœma triphyllum; the green dragon, Dracunculus vulgaris, and in the United States Arisœma Dracontium; the female or water dragon, Calla palustris.
10. n. In Scotland, a paper kite.
11. n. See the extract.
12. Pertaining to or resembling dragons; performed by dragons; fierce; formidable.
13. n. The larva of a European notodontid moth, Hybocampa millhauseri, having remarkably angular outlines and conspicuous corners and humps, so that it resembles an oak-leaf curled and eaten by a tortricid larva.
14. n. The hellgrammite fly, Corydalus cornutus.

Wiktionary

1. n. A legendary, serpentine or reptilian creature.
2. n. A gigantic beast, typically reptilian with leathery bat-like wings, lion-like claws, scaly skin and a serpent-like body, often a monster with fiery breath.
3. n. circa 1900, Edith Nesbit, The Last of the Dragons:
4. n. But as every well-brought-up prince was expected to kill a dragon, and rescue a princess, the dragons grew fewer and fewer till it was often quite hard for a princess to find a dragon to be rescued from.
5. n. A large, snake-like monster with the eyes of a hare, the horns of a stag and the claws of a tiger, usually beneficent
6. n. 1913, Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, chapter XIII:
7. n. These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another.
8. n. An animal of various species that resemble a dragon in appearance:
9. n. A very large snake; a python.
10. n. Any of various agamid lizards of the genera Draco, Physignathus or Pogona.
11. n. A Komodo dragon.
12. n. The constellation Draco.
13. n. An unpleasant woman; a harridan.
14. n. The (historical) Chinese empire or the People's Republic of China.
15. n. Something very formidable or dangerous.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A fabulous animal, generally represented as a monstrous winged serpent or lizard, with a crested head and enormous claws, and regarded as very powerful and ferocious.
2. n. A fierce, violent person, esp. a woman.
3. n. A constellation of the northern hemisphere figured as a dragon; Draco.
4. n. A luminous exhalation from marshy grounds, seeming to move through the air as a winged serpent.
5. n. A short musket hooked to a swivel attached to a soldier's belt; -- so called from a representation of a dragon's head at the muzzle.
6. n. A small arboreal lizard of the genus Draco, of several species, found in the East Indies and Southern Asia. Five or six of the hind ribs, on each side, are prolonged and covered with weblike skin, forming a sort of wing. These prolongations aid them in making long leaps from tree to tree. Called also flying lizard.
7. n. A variety of carrier pigeon.
8. n. A fabulous winged creature, sometimes borne as a charge in a coat of arms.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. proceed for an extended period of time
2. v. last unnecessarily long
3. n. a faint constellation twisting around the north celestial pole and lying between Ursa Major and Cepheus
4. n. a fiercely vigilant and unpleasant woman
5. n. any of several small tropical Asian lizards capable of gliding by spreading winglike membranes on each side of the body
6. n. a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings