| mantichora | |
noun | |
| a mythical monster having the head of man (with horns) and the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion [syn: manticore] |
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| an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle. |
| an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance. |
mantichora
a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning "man-eater." Medieval writers used the manticore as a symbol of the devil. In Canadian author Robertson Davies's The Manticore (1972), the protagonist dreams of a sibyl leading a manticore and examines his dream under Jungian analysis
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