Reptilious

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having the appearance, nature or characteristics of a reptile such as a lizard, snake or turtle
2. Resembling a cold-blooded scaly creature of the kind that crawls or slithers across the ground
3. Like a reptile in form, habit or manner, especially in being cold, scaly or slithering

Etymology: "Reptilious" is a straightforward formation: it combines "reptile," from Latin "reptilis" (creeping, crawling), with the adjective-forming suffix "-ious," which turns a noun into a description of its qualities. Words built this way, such as "sebaceous" from "sebum," follow the same pattern, so the new word simply means having the nature of a reptile. The adjective did not arrive alone. It displaced two older forms, the plain adjective "reptile" and the rarer "reptitious," which had been used with the same sense. Over time the "-ious" version won out, and it is the one that now stands in dictionaries as the standard way to describe something reptile-like.

Synonyms: reptilian