[man-ti-kawr, -kohr] 
| a legendary monster with a man's head, horns, a lion's body, and the tail of a dragon or, sometimes, a scorpion. |
ras < Iranian; cf. Old Persian martiya- man, Avestan xvar- devour, Persian mardom-khar < man-eating; prob. ult. alluding to the tiger, once common in the Caspian Sea region
| man·ti·core (mān'tĭ-kôr', -kōr') n. A legendary monster having the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. [Middle English manticores, from Latin mantichōra, from Greek mantikhōras, variant of martiokhōras, from Old Iranian *martiya-khvāra-, man-eater : *martiya-, man; see mer- in Indo-European roots + *-khvāra-, eater; see swel- in Indo-European roots.] |
manticore
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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