If you want to go around proclaiming that "birds are dinosaurs" all the time, then you have no choice but to accept that dinosaurs are also reptiles.
That means that both *Tyrannus* and *Tyrannosaurus* are "reptiles" in general and "tyrant reptiles" in particular.
And then, of course, there's an alternative: dropping the name Reptilia altogether and using Amniota and Sauropsida instead*. I prefer it because it (still) comes with connotations that don't even necessarily hold for lacertids.
* Or just being more specific. Often people talk about "reptiles" and mean only some of them.
> Why not simply "a southern tyrannosaur"? That would even have been > shorter, and is familiar to a lot _more_ people than the term > "tyrant reptile" which I don't think I've ever seen before. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I'm not sure. I also don't know why there is this current trend in dinosaur paleontology to refer to turkeys and chickens as "living dinosaurs" instead of calling them birds, avians, galliformes, or any number of other more familiar, and more specific terms.
"Instead"? No, it's just to avoid implying, when talking about dinosaurs, that "dinosaurs" and "birds" are non-overlapping categories when in fact they're nesting ones.
Also; I know that you know this, but I'm going to mention it anyway. _Tyrannosaurus_ = "tyrant reptile." While it is more commonly translated as "tyrant lizard" I have still seen plenty of translations refer to the more correct (conceptually, if not grammatically) "tyrant reptile king."
"Lizard" fits the original meaning much better than "reptile". The very concept of "reptile" is less than 200 years old, and von Huene still didn't accept it (that is, the distinction between Amphibia and Reptilia) in the 1950s.
Given that _Tyrannosaurus_ is the most popular dinosaur genus of all time, it would appear that "tyrant reptile" should be the name that you have seen to death at this point.
Not as far as I remember.