different between beaver vs reptile

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?bi?v?/
• (General American) enPR: b??v?r, IPA^(key): /?biv?/
• Rhymes: -i?v?(?)
• Homophones: Belvoir, bever, bevor

Etymology 1

From Middle English bever, from Old English beofor (“beaver”), from Proto-Germanic *bebruz (“beaver”) (compare West Frisian bever, Dutch bever, French bièvre, German Biber, dialectal Swedish bjur), from Proto-Indo-European *b?éb?rus (“beaver”) (compare Welsh befer, Latin fiber, Lithuanian b?bras, Russian ???? (bobr), Avestan ????????????????????????? (bauura), ????????????????????????? (bauuri), Sanskrit ????? (bábhru, “mongoose; ichneumon”)), from Proto-Indo-European *b?erH- (“brown”). Related to brown and bear.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers or beaver)

1. A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet.
2. A hat, of various shapes, made from a felted beaver fur (or later of silk), fashionable in Europe between 1550 and 1850.
   • 1856-1858, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip II

     a broad beaver slouched over his eyes

   • 1896: For the White Rose of Arno by Owen Rhoscomyl

     The woman's hair and woman's beaver had both been jerked off, exposing the cropped head of a man...

3. (vulgar, slang) The pubic hair and/or vulva of a woman.
   • 2010 Dennis McFadden, Hart's Grove: Stories

     […] once she wore none at all, swears to this day that he saw her beaver that fateful Friday night.

4. The fur of the beaver.
5. Beaver cloth, a heavy felted woollen cloth, used chiefly for making overcoats.
6. A brown colour, like that of a beaver (also called beaver brown).

7. (slang) A man who wears a beard.
   • 1936 P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas:

     The beards were false ones. I could see the elastic going over their ears. In other words, I had fallen among a band of criminals who were not wilful beavers, but had merely assumed the fungus for purposes of disguise.

Synonyms

• (hat): castor, castoreum (archaic)
• (fur): castorette
• (cloth): castor

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Animals

Etymology 2

See bevor.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers)

1. Alternative spelling of bevor (“part of a helmet”)
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act I, Scene 1,^[1]

     Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,

     Is either slain or wounded dangerously;

     I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:

   • 1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XII, lxvii:

     With trembling hands her beaver he untied, / Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face.

   • 1951 Adaptation of the 1885 Ormsby translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, correcting Ormsby as to the portion of the helmet referred to by Cervantes (see Note 11 to Chapter II) at the suggestion of Juan Hartzenbusch, a 19th Century Director of the National Library of Spain.

     They laid a table for him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughble sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him.

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness, Faber & Faber 1992, p.128:

     As each one brings a little of himself to what he sees you brought the trappings of your historic preoccupations, so that Monsieur flattered you by presenting himself with beaver up like Hamlet's father's ghost!

Further reading

• beaver on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Castor on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• beaver on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• The Manual of Heraldry, Fifth Edition, by Anonymous, London, 1862, online at [2]

References

English

Etymology

From Middle English reptil, from Old French reptile, from Late Latin r?ptile, neuter of reptilis (“creeping”), from Latin r?p? (“to creep”), from Proto-Indo-European *rep- (“to creep, slink”) (Pokorny; Watkins, 1969).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??p?ta?l/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???p.ta?l/
• Rhymes: -a?l

Noun

reptile (plural reptiles)

1. A cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia; an amniote that is neither a synapsid nor a bird.
2. (figuratively) A mean or grovelling person.

   • This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.

   • "That reptile," whispered Pott, catching Mr. Pickwick by the arm, and pointing towards the stranger. "That reptile — Slurk, of the Independent!"

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, chapter XXVII:

     {...} If I pitied you for crying and looking so very frightened, you should spurn such pity. Ellen, tell him how disgraceful this conduct is. Rise, and don’t degrade yourself into an abject reptile—don’t!’

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:reptile

Related terms

• mammal-like reptile
• Reptilia
• reptilian
• reptilianness
• reptiliology
• reptiliologist

Translations

Adjective

reptile (not comparable)

1. Creeping; moving on the belly, or by means of small and short legs.
2. Grovelling; low; vulgar.

   a reptile race or crew; reptile vices

   • 1796, Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace

     There is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution, but of fear.

   • 1797-1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel

     And dislodge their reptile souls / From the bodies and forms of men.

Synonyms

• (creeping, crawling): reptilious, creeping, crawling; reptitious (obsolete)
• (contemptible): See Thesaurus:despicable

See also

• herpetology
• Category:en:Reptiles for a list of reptiles in English
• reptile on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Peltier, peitrel, perlite

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin r?ptilis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??p.til/

Noun

reptile m (plural reptiles)

1. reptile

Derived terms

• reptilien

Further reading

• “reptile” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Latin

Adjective

r?ptile

1. neuter nominative singular of r?ptilis
2. neuter accusative singular of r?ptilis
3. neuter vocative singular of r?ptilis