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The term "dragon" appears by the following century. Afterwards, four-legged dragons become increasingly popular in heraldry and become distinguished from the two-legged kind during the sixteenth century, at which point the latter kind becomes commonly known as the "wyver" and later "wyvern".
In early depictions, as with dragons in other cultures, the distinction between Germanic dragons and regular snakes is blurred, with both being referred to as: "worm" (Old English: wyrm, Old Norse: ormʀ, ormr, Old High German: wurm), "snake" (Old English: snaca, Old Norse: snókr, snákr, Old High German: *snako), "adder" (Old English: nǣdre, Old Norse: naðr, Old High German: nātara), and ...
The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.. The Roman poet Virgil in his poem Culex lines 163–201, [1] describing a shepherd battling a big constricting snake, calls it "serpens" and also "draco", showing that in his time the two words probably could mean the same thing.
The Beowulf dragon is the earliest example in literature of the typical European dragon and first incidence of a fire-breathing dragon. [10] The Beowulf dragon is described with Old English terms such as draca (dragon), and wyrm (reptile, or serpent), and as a creature with a venomous bite. [11]
Korean folk mythology states that most dragons were originally imugis (이무기; Imugi), or lesser dragons, which were said to resemble gigantic serpents.There are a few different versions of Korean folklore that describe both what imugis are and how they aspire to become full-fledged dragons.
An early appearance of the Old English word dracan (oblique singular of draca) in Beowulf [1]. The word dragon entered the English language in the early 13th century from Old French dragon, which, in turn, comes from Latin draco (genitive draconis), meaning "huge serpent, dragon", from Ancient Greek δράκων, drákōn (genitive δράκοντος, drákontos) "serpent".
The word dragon derives from the Greek δράκων (drakōn) and its Latin cognate draco.Ancient Greeks applied the term to large, constricting snakes. [2] The Greek drakōn was far more associated with poisonous spit or breath than the modern Western dragon, though fiery breath is still attested in a few myths.
According to the 19th-century English archaeologist Charles Boutell, a lindworm in heraldry is basically "a dragon without wings". [12] A different heraldic definition by German historian Maximilian Gritzner was "a dragon with four feet" instead of usual two, [13] so that depictions with - comparatively smaller - wings exist as well.