Origin Story
The word dinosaur is, in fact, a relatively recent invention. In the early 19th century, people were astonished to dig up enormous bones and teeth from the ground. What kind of creature could they belong to? In 1841, the British anatomist Richard Owen gave these giant extinct creatures a name. Drawing on Greek, he combined deinos, meaning "terrible" or "fearsome," with sauros, meaning "lizard," to coin dinosaur — the "terrible lizard." It was a name that captured the awe people felt before those fossils. So this familiar word, known even to small children, turns out to be a scholar's coinage less than two centuries old.
Strictly speaking, dinosaurs were not lizards at all. But to a 19th-century scholar's eye they looked like giant lizards, so the name stuck — and it has remained fixed ever since.
-
Online Etymology Dictionarydinosaur (n.): 1841, coined in Modern Latin (Dinosaurus) by Sir Richard Owen, from Greek deinos "terrible" + sauros "lizard"
-
Oxford English Dictionarydinosaur: from Greek deinos "terrible" and sauros "lizard," coined by Richard Owen in 1841
-
Merriam-Webster DictionaryNew Latin Dinosauria, from Greek deinos terrifying + sauros lizard
Word Evolution
Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
Dinosaur is "deinos (terrible) + sauros (lizard)." Remember it as "the terrible lizard."
""To creatures gone for hundreds of millions of years, a 19th-century scholar gave the gift of a name: terrible lizard.""
