Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various reptiles of the suborder Sauria, which includes the lizards and in former classifications also the crocodiles and dinosaurs.
- adj. Of or relating to the Sauria.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Belonging or relating to the Sauria, in any sense; having legs and scales, as a lizard; lacertiform; lacertilian.
- n. A member of the Sauria, in any sense; a scaly reptile with legs, as a lacertilian or lizard. Though the term Sauria once lapsed from any definite signification, in consequence of the popular application of Cuvier's loose use of the word, saurian is still used as a convenient designation of reptiles which are not amphibians, chelonians, ophidians, or crocodilians. See cuts under
Plesiosaurus .
Wiktionary
- n. A reptile of the suborder Sauria; a lizard.
- adj. Pertaining to the Sauria.
- adj. Resembling a lizard.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Zoöl.) Of or pertaining to, or of the nature of, the Sauria.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to lizards
- n. any of various reptiles of the suborder Sauria which includes lizards; in former classifications included also the crocodiles and dinosaurs
Etymologies
- Late Latin *saurianus, from Ancient Greek σαύρα (saura, "lizard") (Wiktionary)
- From New Latin Sauria, suborder name, from saurus, lizard, from Greek sauros. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The term saurian means "lizard," and it has many prefixes to indicate the different genera and species.”
“You don't know just how perfect the word saurian is :-)) You can totally smell it.”
“It has been appropriately called the saurian whale, for it has both the swiftness and the rapid movements of this monster of our own day.”
“The mid-cretaceous “saurian sauna” – no ice at sea level at poles.”
AGU Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth’s history | Serendipity
“Fast forward to the mid-cretaceous “saurian sauna”, when there was no ice at sea level at poles.”
AGU Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth’s history | Serendipity
“Barney ` s lawyers at the New York firm of Gibney, Anthony and Flaherty sent stiff warning letters last week to Web sites displaying less-than-flattering images of the plump saurian, says CNET News.”
“With all saurian ceremony, Menes was sculled over to found a city in about 3000 BC that would worship crocodiles, a city that under Ptolemy II was christened Crocodopolis.”
The Huffington Post: Richard Bangs: Quest for the Lord of the Nile
“A flagrant imitation of Ursula Le Guin's fondly remembered proto-Thog line "Back to the saurian ooze from whence it sprung!”
“I mean, what would you expect when an eight foot saurian biped in silvery vacuum armor suddenly appears in the middle of the United Nations Security Council?”
365 tomorrows » 2008 » August : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“A traveler from the south-a merchant he called himself, a thief and a murderer I guessed-told me, for the price of a cup of sour ale, of the great rock that had been thrust up from the bones of Krynn by the tremors of the Second Cataclysm, and of the silhouette he had once glimpsed by moonlight perched upon its summit: a winged, saurian shape that lifted its wedge-shaped head toward the sky.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘saurian’.
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Knee Deep in Chic
Words, prose, bon mots, and literary styles that cause a contagious enthusiasm by its very existence. They can be muses to a story. rekindling the spark that went out. The cure-all elixir to a bla...
euphuism, quiddity, saudade, zugzwang, razbliuto, parti pris, oleaginous, crevasse, chantepleure, chiaroscuro, prestidigitation, dysphemism and 79 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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Beastly adjectives
How would you describe your brother-in-law? Is he a tad bovine? Maybe there is something lacertilian about him? Or his business practices seem a little percesocine to you.
dasyproctine, tolypeutine, asinine, feline, canine, eusuchian, simian, musteline, cervine, caprine, percesocine, hirudine and 227 more...
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words
diplopic, dolorous, farrago, surety, scuttlebutt, Arabesque, infarct, neurasthenia, lambent, expurge, univocal, simper and 395 more...
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Oblivion
By David Foster Wallace
ossify, reverie, hypergeometric, emetic, mien, cruciform, accreted, perpend, rheostat, predilections, coccyx, hirsute and 178 more...
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jameslong's Words
tergiversate, ossify, syncretic, agenbite, enwit, doxy, borborygm, pulchritudinous, oxters, fervid, banal, asinine and 102 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
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Underworld
Don DeLillo
roily, reverie, slidy, bandido, mohair, brilliantine, stupe, juke step, jowly, juke, wicket, quidbit and 391 more...
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do ...
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again By David Foster Wallace
miscegenating, zephyr, cessation, seepage, foliated, peoria, amorphous, virtuoso, caprice, apoplexy, gales, verve and 69 more...
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DFW's Strapping Vocabulary
existentiovoyeuri..., conundra, howling fantods, notwithstanding, catharts, miscegenating, scotophilic, candent, recalcitrant, glabrous, threnody, saurian and 66 more...
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2012 Words
Words looked up in 2012
portcullis, demonian, lanceolate, chamfer, ochreous, attar, verdure, palter, tergiversation, punctilios, pellucid, excrescence and 71 more...
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Rose
Words encountered in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
leucrota, cynophales, polycaudate, dragopods, hydrophora, hoopoe, parander, hypnales, prester, spectafici, saurian, scitales and 3 more...
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While reading
littoral, manichean, omerta, opprobrium, discomfit, betise, tittle, pellucid, chiffonier, hagiographic, essoin, raiment and 35 more...
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fauna
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supposedly fun thing I'll never do again
Words from the aforenamed text
Tweets
Looking for tweets for saurian.
mollusque . . . he was one of the very few larger saurians in the émigré marshes who followed me in 1939 to the hospitable and altogether admirable U.S.A., where with egg-laying promptness he founded a Russian-language quarterly which he is still directing today, thirty-five years later, in his heroic dotage.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 130 Jun 13, 2009