Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various cold-blooded, usually egg-laying vertebrates of the class Reptilia, such as a snake, lizard, crocodile, turtle, or dinosaur, having an external covering of scales or horny plates and breathing by means of lungs.
- n. A person regarded as despicable or treacherous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Creeping or crawling; repent; reptant; reptatory; of or pertaining to the Reptilia, in any sense.
- Groveling; low; mean: as, a reptile race.
- n. A creeping animal; an animal that goes on its belly, or moves with small, short legs.
- n. Specifically An oviparous quadruped; a four-footed egg-laying animal: applied about the middle of the eighteenth century to the animals then technically called Amphibia, as frogs, toads, newts, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles; any amphibian.
- n. By restriction, upon the recognition of the divisions Amphibia and Reptilia, a scaly or pholidote reptile, as distinguished from a naked reptile; any snake, lizard, crocodile, or turtle; a member of the Reptilia proper; a saurian.
- n. A groveling, abject, or mean person: used in contempt.
Wiktionary
- n. A cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia.
- n. figuratively A mean or grovelling person.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Creeping; moving on the belly, or by means of small and short legs.
- adj. Hence: Groveling; low; vulgar.
- n. (Zoöl.) An animal that crawls, or moves on its belly, as snakes,, or by means of small, short legs, as lizards, and the like.
- n. (Zoöl.) One of the Reptilia, or one of the Amphibia.
- n. A groveling or very mean person.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia including tortoises, turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and extinct forms
Etymologies
- Middle English reptil, from Old French reptile, from Late Latin rēptile, neuter of reptilis ("creeping"), from Latin rēpō ("to creep"), from Proto-Indo-European *rep- (“to creep, slink”) (Pokorny; Watkins, 1969). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English reptil, from Old French reptile, from Late Latin rēptile, from neuter of Latin rēptilis, creeping, from rēptus, past participle of rēpere, to creep. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“By the way, nothing cladistically out-of-line with the term reptile, so long as we agree that Reptilia is a clade in which case it includes Aves and excludes Synapsida of which mammals are part.”
“A cat is partially eaten leaving a zombie tail, which in turn is eaten by a snake that grows into a man-eating monster bigger than the title reptile of Anaconda.”
“The crux here is the Latin word reptile, which does not really mean "reptile" in its English sense, but rather "creeping" (though it is, of course, the source of our modern word "reptile").”
“Here again there must be manifestation of the type of life, this time of what we call the reptile type; the tortoise is chosen as the typical creature, and while the tortoise typifies the type to be evolved, reptiles, amphibious creatures of every description, swarm over the earth, becoming more and more land-like in their character as the proportion of land to water increases.”
“But, she notes that she is currently working on the description of a new reptile from the region, so zoological discovery continues, even in a fairly well-known part of the world.”
“Police brought in reptile wrangler Chris Law, who captured the gator by grabbing it at the tail with his bare hands.”
“The brainstem is often referred to as the "reptile brain" because it is a structure we share with more primitive life forms like lizards and snakes.”
The Huffington Post: Dike Drummond, M.D.: Three Things to Do When the "F" Word Stops You Cold
“The substitution of swymmende ( "swimming") for Latin reptile ( "creeping") is not, I think, evidence that Aelfric doesn't know how to translate the word.”
“Barta, as the local Nyishi tribesmen call the six-foot-something reptile, is the most-feared creature among the tribes in Arunachal Pradesh.”
“SignOnSanDiego. com News Metro -- Plumber faces trial in reptile, gun case: An El Cajon plumber who had a garage full of guns and deadly snakes, and an alligator in his living room, must stand trial on a variety of weapons and animal charges, a judge ruled yesterday.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘reptile’.
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Nature and Environment
north, east, west, mountain, sea, beach, river, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, island and 205 more...
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ept
kept, wept, adept, inept, depth, scepter, exception, reception, perception, preconception, conception, inception and 74 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Latin Spelling Bee List
need to know these words!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
inane, ambivalent, incriminate, interrupt, amicable, meticulous, animosity, curriculum, electoral, transect, condolences, bugle and 132 more...
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cindywrites's Words
chiaroscuro, mollycoddle, feckless, evocative, provocative, invocation, beckon, allay, becalm, console, lull, soothe and 479 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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ABACABB
words/names from video games
ganon, doki doki, ganondorf, toadstool, bowser, dr. robotnik, link, zelda, sonic, 1 up, kid icarus, metroid and 114 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Speaking in Tongues - an REM list
Words heard in various REM songs that I enjoy and that I think are indicative of the band. Not too literally, of course.
pilgrimage, pageant, suspicion, penitence, gentlemen, chronic, stigma, deadlier, transit, fortunate, momentum, misconstrued and 162 more...
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Rhymeless.
From wikipedia: "The following is a list of English words without rhymes, i.e. a list of words in the English language which rhyme with no other English words in the sense that they are pronounced ...
almond, angry, angst, anxious, aspirin, bachelor, breadth, bulb, bulbous, calumny, cannabis, caveat and 49 more...
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Animal Study
Words that have to do with animals that live in the North East.
habitat, adapt, carnivore, herbivore, nocturnal, predator, prey, mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird, warm blooded and 9 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for reptile.
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