crocodile

英文词源

crocodile

crocodile: [13] The crocodile gets its name from its habit of basking in the sun on sandbanks or on the shores of rivers. The word means literally ‘pebble-worm’, and it was coined in Greek from the nouns krókē ‘pebbles’ and drilos ‘worm’. The resulting Greek compound *krokódrīlos has never actually been found, for it lost its second r, giving krokódīlos, and this r reappeared and disappeared capriciously during the word’s journey through Latin and Old French to English. Middle English had it – the 13th century form was cokodrille – but in the 16th century the modern r-less form took over, based on Latin crocodīlus.

crocodile (n.)

1560s, restored spelling of Middle English cokedrille, kokedrille (c. 1300), from Medieval Latin cocodrillus, from Latin crocodilus, from Greek krokodilos, word applied by Herodotus to the crocodile of the Nile, apparently due to its basking habits, from kroke "pebbles" + drilos "worm." The crocodile tears story was in English from at least c. 1400.