Re: The Aussie ?tyrannosaur?

[Jocelyn Falconnet <j.falconnet@gmail.com>]

The Ancient Greeks did have different words to designate these animals:

salamandra: salamandre (big lizard for Ancient Greeks... and for us
until the beginning of the 19th century)

*chamaileos* => chamaeleon
*drakon* => snake
*ophis* => snake
*ophidion* => small snake
*saura* => female lizard
*sauros* => male lizard

*chelone* => turtle
*chelonarion* => small turtle

*champsai* => crocodiles (from Egyptian))
*krokodeilos* => crocodile
*souchos* => Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile god (from Egyptian)

And last but not least:
*erpetos* => any crawling animal, often in opposition to man or birds;
in particular: snake. Sometimes= insects.

Very similar to the Latin concept of *reptile* (crawler), as in the
French *reptation* (crawling).

If there was any word Ancient Greeks used to designate all these
animals as a whole, it would have been *erpetos*.

2010/3/27 Raptorial Talon <raptorialtalon@gmail.com>:
> About the "tyrant reptile" thing: does "sauros" truly mean reptile?
> I'm curious about the etymology. Did the Greeks use it to describe
> snakes and crocodiles and turtles as well as lizards? If so, what was
> their word to distingush lizards alone?
-- 
Jocelyn Falconnet