![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordhenatrice (HEN-uh-tris) - n., (rare) a female cockatrice.
So rare, in fact, that I'm not finding an entry for it outside the OED -- which is not surprising, as the mythology of cockatrices is that there are only male ones, who lay eggs that produce only other male cockatrices. Coined around 1840, by taking the first part of cockatrice to mean a male chicken and replacing it with a female chicken -- cockatrice itself coming from Old French cocatris, from medieval Latin calcatrix (from calcare, to track), a translation of the Greek ikhneumÅn, modern English form ichneumon, literally tracker, a kind of Egyptian mongoose, which is amazingly ironic given that the ichneumon is supposedly one of the few beasts that the cockatrice cannot turn into stone with its gaze.
I'd stick a pic of a (male) cockatrice here, but I think this post has enough appropriation going on already.
---L.
So rare, in fact, that I'm not finding an entry for it outside the OED -- which is not surprising, as the mythology of cockatrices is that there are only male ones, who lay eggs that produce only other male cockatrices. Coined around 1840, by taking the first part of cockatrice to mean a male chicken and replacing it with a female chicken -- cockatrice itself coming from Old French cocatris, from medieval Latin calcatrix (from calcare, to track), a translation of the Greek ikhneumÅn, modern English form ichneumon, literally tracker, a kind of Egyptian mongoose, which is amazingly ironic given that the ichneumon is supposedly one of the few beasts that the cockatrice cannot turn into stone with its gaze.
I'd stick a pic of a (male) cockatrice here, but I think this post has enough appropriation going on already.
---L.
