Words of the Month - Ophidian Etymologies

         In honor of the Year of the Snake (which we celebrated with block prints here), today’s words of the month are all words for snakes.

        ophidian - Not exactly in common usage, this is a fancy word meaning “snake-like.”  It comes from the Ancient Greek word for “small snake.”  It now also refers (scientifically) to a group of reptiles including all snakes and a few other reptiles that are more closely related to snakes than other lizards.  But let’s get back to the basics…

        snake - from Old English, from a root meaning “to crawl; creeping thing”

        serpent - from Latin, also from a root meaning “to creep.”  This is the same ultimate root that in Greek became herpeton, which gives us our scientific word herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians.  Serpent is the word that was used to translate the tempter in Genesis, which certainly hasn’t helped its reputation.

        viper - from the Latin word for “snake,” which comes ultimately from the same root meaning “to live” as in vivacious.  In English (in the early 15th century) the meaning narrowed to refer only to venomous snakes.

        venom - this comes by way of French, from Latin, in a long series of shifts in meaning: poison, from drug or medicine, from charm or seduction, from love potion, from a root that meant “to desire” and also gave us Venus.

        adder - from Old English, originally a word for “snake” in general, the sense narrowed to the venomous viper of Britain.  However, the word was originally nadder, and lost its N through faulty separation, which you can read about in the post The Wandering N.

        python - This was the name of the individual giant serpent that Apollo vanquished near Delphi.  The name became the word for particularly large tropical constrictors, beginning via French around 1580.  You can see a post about some other eponyms, What’s in a Name.

        boa - The boa was a kind of large snake mentioned by Pliny in the 1st century CE, but no one knows where that name came from.  By the 1620s the word referred to South American constrictors, and in 1836 it was applied to the scarf of fur or feathers wrapped, like a boa constrictor, around the wearer’s neck and shoulders.

        cobra - This means “snake” in Portuguese, being just the “snake” part of the Portuguese name meaning “snake of the hood.”  The Portuguese came from Latin colubra, another word for “snake,” which is “of uncertain origin.”  The Latin word also gave us colubridae, the scientific name for the largest and most diverse family of snakes, colubrine, which is another fancy word meaning “snake-like,” and Coulobre, the name of a monstrous serpent you can learn about in my post Unique Named Dragons.

        asp - The name of this venomous snake of Egypt entered English around 1520, ultimately from Greek.  Its name meant “round shield,” presumably because of its neck hood.

        From “creeping” to “living,” and from the Fall of humanity to the love potions of Venus, snakes have developed from some interesting roots.  I’m certainly glad not to live in a place where I have to worry about the dangers of snake bites, but I’ve always liked snakes.  How about you?

[Pictures: Rattlesnake, lino-cut by Christopher Wormell, from Teeth, Tails, and Tentacles, 2004;

Viper, linoleum block print by Sebastien G. Orsini from Dans le Mystere des Animaux Sauvages, 2011 (Image from Sebastien Orsini);

Cobra, lino-cut by Christopher Wormell, from An Alphabet of Animals, 1990.]