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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Word of the Day for July 21, 1999
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crocodile [n. KROK-uh-dyl]
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A crocodile is a large predatory reptile that lives in swamps,
rivers, or lakes in tropical regions. Their skin is thick and
armored, and their snout is long and heavily toothed.
The original Greek krocodilos was a small lizard that lived in stone
walls. The name is a compound of kroke (pebble, stone) and drilos
(worm), so the lizard was literally a "stone worm." When the Greeks
saw the much larger "water lizards" that swam in Egypt's Nile River,
they gave them the same name.
This word has been changed twice by "taboo deformation," in which
syllables of a word for something fearsome are reversed or shifted.
First, as it entered French from Latin, the "r" shifted and it became
cocodril. Then it entered English as cokedrille, and the "r" shifted
back, giving the modern form.
Another taboo-deformed word is alligator:
http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1998/10/19.html
Today's Cool Fact is about crocodiles:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/07/21.html
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