Vipers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family of serpents identified by their triangular skulls and venomous bites
2. A type of snake known for its biting venom and distinctive head shape
3. A group of reptiles characterized by their poisonous fangs and stout bodies

Etymology: "Vipers" is simply the plural of "viper", so the story belongs to the singular. The Romans gave the snake its name in Latin as "vipera", and it was built from a striking piece of description: "vivipara", meaning "bearing live young", combining "vivus" ("alive") with "parere" ("to bear"). The idea was that the female viper gives birth to fully formed young rather than laying eggs, an observation the Romans turned into the snake's name. The Latin word passed into Old French as "vipre" and then into Middle French as "vipere", and English took it from there. Along the way the word lost its original link to birth and became simply the name of a dangerous, venomous snake, the kind that struck fear into those who met it in the grass. Its cousins show how far the word travelled. "Weever" and "wyvern" are doublets of "viper", descended from the same Latin source but reshaped by different routes into English, so that a fish and a winged dragon are related to a snake by a single shared word.

Synonyms: snakes, serpents

Antonyms: friends, allies