anaconda
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an·a·con·da
(ăn'ə-kŏn'də) 
n.
Either of two nonvenomous, semiaquatic snakes (Eunectes murinus or E. noteus) of tropical South America that kill their prey by suffocating it in their coils. E. murinus, the giant anaconda, can attain lengths from 5 to 9 meters (16.4 to 29.5 feet).
n.
Either of two nonvenomous, semiaquatic snakes (Eunectes murinus or E. noteus) of tropical South America that kill their prey by suffocating it in their coils. E. murinus, the giant anaconda, can attain lengths from 5 to 9 meters (16.4 to 29.5 feet).
[Perhaps alteration of Sinhalese henakandayā, whip snake.]
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anaconda
(click to enlarge)
Green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). (credit: © Z. Leszczynski/Animals Animals)
Green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). (credit: © Z. Leszczynski/Animals Animals)
For more information on anaconda, visit Britannica.com.
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from Sinhala
This word originated in Sri Lanka
Boa o boa! You wouldn't want to exchange hugs with an anaconda. Your lifespan would be constricted--not to mention your ribcage. That's how an anaconda prepares you for dinner; it sinks its teeth into you, then wraps itself around your chest so tightly you can't inhale to shout "Down, boa."
It's the terror of the Amazon, or at least of the Amazon as depicted in the 1997 movie Anaconda, where special-effects imitation anacondas writhe and gobble up the bad guys and some of the good. South America is its only native habitat. But it has a name from the other side of the world, from the Sinhala language of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. How come?
The Oxford English Dictionary provides us with a reasonable explanation, namely, that it was a mistake. At first, the name from Ceylon was properly applied to a snake from Ceylon. In 1693, in a list of snakes from India in the Leyden (Holland) Museum, the Englishman John Ray wrote of "anacandaia of the Ceylonese, i.e. he that crushes the limbs of the buffaloes and yoke beasts." And for more than a hundred years afterwards, in English eyes, the anaconda was indeed a resident of Ceylon. But nineteenth-century experts unaccountably began using the same name for the snake residing in the Amazon basin. An 1849 British Museum Catalogue of Snakes lists "The Ancondo, Eunectes murimus ... Brazil ... Tropical America."
There are indeed constrictor snakes in Sri Lanka. Schoolchildren in a remote part of the country even found a double-headed one in 1997. Since the nineteenth century, however, the constrictors of Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia have been called pythons, a name the ancient Greeks used for a mythical monster.
Sinhala is the national language of Sri Lanka, spoken by more than thirteen million people there. Like English, it is a member of the far-flung Indo-European language family; Sinhala belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch along with Hindi, Urdu, and Romani. One other word from Sinhala that is known in English is ambarella, not a special kind of umbrella but a tropical tree with an egg-shaped yellow fruit also called the Otaheita apple.
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Anaconda
This article is about snakes. For other uses, see Anaconda (disambiguation).
An anaconda is a large, nonvenomous snake found in tropical South America. Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the common or green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, which is one of the largest snakes in the world.
Anaconda may refer to:
- Any member of the genus Eunectes, a group of large, aquatic snakes found in South America
- Eunectes murinus, the green anaconda, the largest species, is found east of the Andes in Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and on the island of Trinidad.
- Eunectes notaeus, the yellow anaconda, a smaller species, is found in eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, Paraguay and northeastern Argentina.
- Eunectes deschauenseei, the dark-spotted anaconda, is a rare species found in northeastern Brazil and coastal French Guiana.
- Eunectes beniensis, the Bolivian anaconda, the most recently defined species, is found in the Departments of Beni and Pando in Bolivia.
- The giant anaconda is a mythical snake of enormous proportions said to be found in South America.
- Any large snake that "crushes" its prey (see Constriction), if applied loosely, could be called anaconda.[1]
Etymology
Per National Geographic, the word anaconda comes from the Tamil word anaikolra, which means elephant killer.[2]
The name was first used in the English language in 1768 by R. Edwin in a colorful description of a large snake found in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), most likely a reticulated python, Python reticulatus. The account, which explains how the snake crushes and devours tigers, is full of popular misconceptions, but was much read at the time, and so gave rise to the myth of the anaconda of Ceylon.[3]
Various theories exist regarding the origin of the name itself. One suggests it was derived from the Sinhala henakandaya. However, this name is used to refer to the brown vine snake, Ahaetulla pulverulenta, a slender, arboreal species that grows to five feet (152 cm) at most and feeds only on small vertebrates.[3] Another theory by Yule and Burnell (1886) is based on an entry in the Catalogue of Indian Serpents from the Leyden Museum (Ray, 1693) that reads: Anacondaia Zeylonensibus, id est Bubalorum aliorumque jumentorum membra conterens, meaning "the anacondaia of the Ceylonese, i.e. he that crushes the limbs of buffaloes and yoke beasts." Without a clear Sinhala connection, they suggest one from the Tamil language instead: anai-kondra (anaik-konda), meaning "which killed an elephant.”[1][3]
References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eunectes |
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Look up anaconda in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- ^ a b Oxford. 1991. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861258-3.
- ^ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/photogalleries/0802_snakes1.html
- ^ a b c Boyle R. 2008. “The Anaconda of Ceylon”: Derivations and the myths at Sunday Times Lanka. Accessed 13 December 2008.
Further reading
- Ray J. 1693. Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis. Vulgarium natas characteristicas, rariorum descriptiones integras exhibens: cum historiis & observationibus anatomicis perquam curiosis. Præmittuntur nonnulla de animalium in genere, sensu, generatione, divisione, &c. - pp. [1-14], 1-336, [1-9]. Londini. (Smith & Walford).
- Yule H, Burnell AC. 1886. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical, and Discursive. London: J. Murray. pp. 133–134. (reprinted in 1903 by W. Crooke).
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