different between griffin vs hippogriff

English

Alternative forms

• grifon, gryfon (obsolete)
• gryphon
• griffon

Etymology

From Middle English griffoun, from Old French griffon, from Latin gryphus, from Ancient Greek ???? (grúps).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???f?n/
• Rhymes: -?f?n

Noun

griffin (plural griffins)

1. A mythical beast having the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle.
2. A large vulture (Gyps fulvus) found in the mountainous parts of Southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, supposed to be the "eagle" of the Bible.
3. An English variety of apple.
4. (dated, India) A person who has just arrived from Europe.
5. A cadet newly arrived in British India: half English, half Indian.
6. A watchful guardian, especially a duenna in charge of a young woman.

Derived terms

• bearded griffin (Gypaetus barbatus)
• griffinish
• griffinism

Descendants

• Chinese Pidgin English: griffin

Translations

References

Anagrams

• riffing

Chinese Pidgin English

Etymology

From English griffin (“newcomer to India”).

Noun

griffin

1. A person who spent less than a year in China.
2. A racing pony in its first season.

References

• Gow, W. S. P. (1924) Gow’s Guide to Shanghai, 1924: A Complete, Concise and Accurate Handbook of the City and District, Especially Compiled for the Use of Tourists and Commercial Visitors to the Far East, Shanghai, page 105:

  Griffin: (Anglo-Indian) a newcomer. One with less than a years’^[sic] residence in China. Also a racing pony in his first season. (“China ponies” are bred in Mongolia and brought down annually).

English

Alternative forms

• hippogryph

Etymology

From French hippogriffe, from Ancient Greek ????? (híppos, “horse”) + ???? (grúps, “griffin”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?h?p????f/
• Hyphenation: hip?po?griff

Noun

hippogriff (plural hippogriffs)

1. a mythical beast, half griffin and half horse, supposedly the offspring of a griffin and a filly.
   • 1732, July 18, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., volume 12 published 1801, page 478:

     To talk of being able to ride with stirrups, is trifling: get on Pegasus, bestride the hippogryph, or mount the white nag in the Revelation.

   • 1753, November 12, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, published with English translation in 1779 in Miscellaneous Works of the Late Philip Dormer Stanhope, second edition, volume 3, lettre LXXIII, pages 298–299:

     Je crains done qu'il faudra que nous nous contentions de quelque moyen plus simple et plus facile, comme d'un enchanteur à gages, un hippogriffe, ou au moins de quelque génie bienfaisant, …

     So I doubt we must be content with some more simple and easy method, such as a magician in our pay, a hippogryph, or at least some kind genius, …

   • 1800 Dec., Sir Richard Phillips, The Monthly magazine, Volume 10, No. 66, page 407:

     Yet the work is surely not a mere map of the hippogryffon wanderings of some disordered imagination…

   • 1831, The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume 52, page 164:

     I imagine a Hippogryph. The Hippogryph is at once the object of the act and the act itself. Abstract the one, the other has no existence: deny me the consciousness of the Hippogryph, you deny me the consciousness of the imagination; I am conscious of zero; I am not conscious at all.

   • 1908, Edmund Doidge Anderson Morshead, Four Plays of Aeschylus, Introduction, page xiv

     Oceanus himself follows on a hippogriff, and counsels Prometheus to submit to Zeus.

Translations