Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Mythology A monster having the wings, claws, and head of a griffin and the body and hindquarters of a horse.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A fabulous creature, like a griffin, but with hoofs and other parts resembling a horse, apparently invented, in imitation of Pegasus, by the romancers of the middle ages, and furnished to their heroes as a means of transportation through the air.
Wiktionary
- n. a mythical beast, half griffin and half horse, supposedly the offspring of a griffin and a filly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Myth.) A fabulous winged animal, half horse and half griffin.
Etymologies
- French hippogriffe, from Italian ippogrifo : Greek hippos, horse; see ekwo- in Indo-European roots + Italian grifo, griffin (from Latin grȳphus; see griffin). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“On closer scrutiny, we find that this creature, as fabled as the hippogriff, is just as uncertain as everyone else.”
“The hippogriff is said to be an omnivore, eating either plants or meat.”
“The hippogriff is the steed that Ruggiero rides to save the naked maiden Angelica in Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso.”
The Guardian: Angelica Lost and Found by Russell Hoban - review
“A hippogriff is a noble beast: In the few medieval legends when this fantastic creature makes an appearance, it is usually the pet of either a knight or a sorcerer.”
“(The hippogriff is the combination of a griffin and a horse which denotes the impossible - Luis notes the Greek scholar Servius somewhat milked this by inventing the "fact" that griffins must hate horses).”
“Angelica Lost and Found is a corker, a wildly entertaining, intellectually adventurous and marvellously odd attempt to answer a question we all must have asked ourselves at some point: what would happen if a hippogriff in a painting fell in love with a mythological heroine and went to find her in present-day San Francisco?”
The Huffington Post: Lindsay Edmunds: Russell Hoban: A Great American Writer
“He may not come riding in on the back of a hippogriff to free his favorite captives from their own version of Azkaban, but he shows up once a week on a cart of books from the prison library, offering an escape of the imagination treasured by many.”
The Huffington Post: Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Guantánamo: What Gitmo Detainees Are Reading
“She confirms that his brother isn't exactly dead, and Juss can get to him with the help of a hippogriff.”
“However, their first hippogriff gets hijacked, so they head back to Demonland and kick out the Witches.”
“The Demons start cleaning things up, and eventually Juss finds another hippogriff.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hippogriff’.
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Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
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Phantasmas
Ouroboros, chimera, incubus, cerberus, hippogriff, leviathan, centaur, Jabberwock, numen, snark, sphinx, hippocamp and 26 more...
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Hip, hip, hooray!
"I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis."
--Zaphod Beeblebroxhip, hips, hipster, Hip, hip, hooray!, rosehip, hippo, hip-huggers, Hippocratic oath, hippocampus, eohippus, hippocrepian, hippie and 30 more...
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the dictionary of fantasy creatures
non-humanoids only. #wordnikAtoZ
unicorn, kirin, cerapter, pegasus, gryphon, hippogriff, basilisk, dragon, wyrm, phoenix, roc, hippocampus and 5 more...
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Words I would use improperly
Words you could as a different meaning, but an intellectual could not follow the conversation
fireboard, grayish-pink, comely, slipstream, bulb, zombie bank, sexting, funemployed, boondoggle, dill overkill, devil-dodger, yangban and 5 more...
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harry potter words
quidditch, apparate, disapparate, lumos, snitch, pensieve, dementor, azkaban, wingardium, leviosa, horcrux, bludger and 376 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, H
hurlyburly, hurtle, hodgepodge, heartwood, hatch, halo, hooptedoodle, hacienda, hairpin, heyday, hardscrabble, hopper and 208 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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kenspeckle's Words
kenspeckle, milquetoast, effluvium, kaboom, maelstrom, ennui, alpenglow, defenestration, schadenfreude, autochthonous, obstreperous, lachrymose and 124 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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uncleosbert's Words
omphalaskepsis, gravid, steatopygian, marmalade, triffid, scurrilous, kith, lilliputian, slunk, snailular, milquetoast, elephantine and 191 more...
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Animals With Nifty Names
hamster, gerbil, ferret, horse, skink, newt, shark, octopus, weasel, panda, giraffe, hyena and 129 more...
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Words I don't understand
Words you don't even understand their definitions
pentahydrate, three-square, hop-pillow, moon-loved, hippogriff
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Fabulous Creatures
Inspired by a Twitter exchange between Kory Stamper and other lexicographers about mythical beings with "fabulous" in their definitions.
mamuque, hippocampus, hippodame, hippogriff, kraken, cockatrice, griffin, centaur, chichevache, hippocentaur, hircocerf, tragelaphus and 40 more...
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Phantasmas
ouroboros, bunyip, demiurge, chimera, leviathan, hippogriff, Gorgon, Sphynx, Scylla, polycephaly, Charybdis, yeti
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hippogriff.

bilby "Astolpho, when he had dismissed his troops, mounted the Hippogriff, and at one flight shot over to Sardinia, thence to Corsica, thence, turning slightly to the left, hovered over Provence, and alighted in the neighborhood of Marseilles. There he did what he had been commanded to do by the holy saint; he unbridled the Hippogriff, and turned him loose to seek his own retreats, never more to be galled with saddle or bit. The horn had lost its marvellous power ever since the visit to the moon."
- Thomas Bulfinch, 'Age of Fable'. Sep 19, 2009
avivamagnolia
~fabulous winged animal, half horse and half griffin. Jan 17, 2009
avivamagnolia In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a hippogriff is a magical beast based upon the hippogriff of various mythologies. It is part eagle and part horse, and sometimes regarded as part griffon and part horse (indeed, in mythology a hippogriff is the offspring of a griffon and a mare). Depictions of the hippogriff vary; sometimes they are shown as a horse with the forequarters of a giant eagle, and sometimes as a horse with wings, an eagle's head, a mane and tail of feathers, and feathered lower legs. Jan 17, 2009