Firedragon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A legendary serpentine dragon that is able to breathe out flames and scorch whatever lies before it
2. A mythical winged reptile of folklore whose breath is fire, often featured as a fearsome guardian in stories
3. A fabled dragon capable of unleashing blasts of flame, appearing in myths and fantasy tales across many cultures

Etymology: Fire dragon is a compound of "fire" and "dragon," and its history is tied closely to a near-twin, "firedrake." The two words are what linguists call a piecewise doublet: they were built from the same two parts, in the same order, and they came to mean the same creature. "Firedrake" has the older, more securely attested history in English, and "fire dragon" appears to have been shaped after it, so the pair reads as one word split into two spellings. The sense is the one readers would expect. A fire dragon is a dragon that breathes or is wreathed in flame, the kind of monster that guards treasure in medieval romance and later fantasy. The word is a plain descriptive coinage, not a loan from another language, and it needed no special story to be understood: "fire" supplies the element, and "dragon" supplies the creature.