Dragonic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to, resembling, or characteristic of mythical dragons, the large winged serpentine creatures of legend
2. Having the qualities of a dragon, such as being fierce, fire-breathing, or hoarding treasure in the manner of legendary beasts
3. Pertaining to the dragon, a fabled monster often depicted as a huge reptile with wings and a fiery breath

Etymology: "Dragonic" is about as transparent as English word-building gets: it takes "dragon" and adds the adjective-forming suffix "-ic," the same ending found in "heroic," "chronic," and "Gothic." The suffix comes from Greek "-ikos," which Latin borrowed as "-icus" and which passed into English through French, where it became the regular way of turning a noun into a descriptive adjective. Adding it to "dragon" yields a word meaning "of or relating to a dragon," and "dragon" itself came into English from Old French, ultimately from Latin "draco," meaning a large serpent. The suffix does most of the work here, so the word's meaning follows directly from its parts. Because "-ic" can attach to almost any noun in English, "dragonic" is a coinage of a type that writers have always been free to create for a particular description, which is why it appears mostly in fantasy and literary contexts rather than in everyday speech.