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ipotane or hippotayne (i-poh-TAIN, hi-poh-TAIN) - n., a mythical creature described as partly human and partly horse, in proportions different from a centaur.
Sometimes incorrectly ascribed to Greek mythology, but actually from medieval European legend: it was first mentioned in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1356). The description there, "thei ben half men and half hors," is, shall we say, very vague, and modern depictions go for either human except for the hind-quarters of a horse (basically, a horse satyr) or human except for the head of a horse (a horse minotaur), or sometimes both horse hindquarters and horse head. The 1499 edition of Mandeville went with the first:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The name was apparently coined from Ancient Greek ippótis, knight, from íppos, horse -- or somehow directly from íppos, but that -t- is hard to explain otherwise. No relation to hippopotamus (lit. river-horse) other than that horse component.
---L.
Sometimes incorrectly ascribed to Greek mythology, but actually from medieval European legend: it was first mentioned in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1356). The description there, "thei ben half men and half hors," is, shall we say, very vague, and modern depictions go for either human except for the hind-quarters of a horse (basically, a horse satyr) or human except for the head of a horse (a horse minotaur), or sometimes both horse hindquarters and horse head. The 1499 edition of Mandeville went with the first:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The name was apparently coined from Ancient Greek ippótis, knight, from íppos, horse -- or somehow directly from íppos, but that -t- is hard to explain otherwise. No relation to hippopotamus (lit. river-horse) other than that horse component.
---L.
