Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various usually cold-blooded egg-laying vertebrates often grouped in the class Reptilia, having dry skin covered with scales or horny plates and breathing by means of lungs, and including the snakes, lizards, crocodilians, and turtles. In some classification systems, birds are considered to be reptiles because they are descended from reptilian dinosaurs.
  • noun A person regarded as contemptible or obsequious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Creeping or crawling; repent; reptant; reptatory; of or pertaining to the Reptilia, in any sense.
  • Groveling; low; mean: as, a reptile race.
  • noun A creeping animal; an animal that goes on its belly, or moves with small, short legs.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A groveling, abject, or mean person: used in contempt.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Creeping; moving on the belly, or by means of small and short legs.
  • adjective Hence: Groveling; low; vulgar
  • noun (Zoöl.) An animal that crawls, or moves on its belly, as snakes,, or by means of small, short legs, as lizards, and the like.
  • noun (Zoöl.) One of the Reptilia, or one of the Amphibia.
  • noun A groveling or very mean person.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia.
  • noun figuratively A mean or grovelling person.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia including tortoises, turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and extinct forms

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[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.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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).

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Examples

  • 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.

    Zombie Confirmed, No Sequel for “Halloween” 2007

  • 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.

    Around the Web 2007

  • 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").

    Snakes in the water and other discoveries Prof. de Breeze 2008

  • 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").

    Archive 2008-07-01 Prof. de Breeze 2008

  • 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.

    Avatâras Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, December, 1899 Annie Wood Besant 1890

  • Police brought in reptile wrangler Chris Law, who captured the gator by grabbing it at the tail with his bare hands.

    Weirdest News Stories in June 2010 | myFiveBest 2010

  • 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.

    Dike Drummond, M.D.: Three Things to Do When the "F" Word Stops You Cold M.D. Dike Drummond 2012

  • 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.

    Dike Drummond, M.D.: Three Things to Do When the "F" Word Stops You Cold M.D. Dike Drummond 2012

  • 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.

    A Strange Fish from Yap 2009

  • 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.

    Archive 2009-07-01 2009

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