REPTILIAN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does reptilian mean? 

• REPTILIAN (noun)
  The noun REPTILIAN has 1 sense:

1. any cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia including tortoises, turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and extinct forms

  Familiarity information: REPTILIAN used as a noun is very rare.

• REPTILIAN (adjective)
  The adjective REPTILIAN has 1 sense:

1. of or relating to the class Reptilia

  Familiarity information: REPTILIAN used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REPTILIAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia including tortoises, turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and extinct forms

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

reptile; reptilian

Hypernyms ("reptilian" is a kind of...):

craniate; vertebrate (animals having a bony or cartilaginous skeleton with a segmented spinal column and a large brain enclosed in a skull or cranium)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "reptilian"):

anapsid; anapsid reptile (primitive reptile having no opening in the temporal region of the skull; all extinct except turtles)

diapsid; diapsid reptile (reptile having a pair of openings in the skull behind each eye)

Diapsida; subclass Diapsida (used in former classifications to include all living reptiles except turtles; superseded by the two subclasses Lepidosauria and Archosauria)

synapsid; synapsid reptile (extinct reptile having a single pair of lateral temporal openings in the skull)

Holonyms ("reptilian" is a member of...):

class Reptilia; Reptilia (class of cold-blooded air-breathing vertebrates with completely ossified skeleton and a body usually covered with scales or horny plates; once the dominant land animals)

Derivation:

reptilian (of or relating to the class Reptilia)

• REPTILIAN (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of or relating to the class Reptilia

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Pertainym:

Reptilia (class of cold-blooded air-breathing vertebrates with completely ossified skeleton and a body usually covered with scales or horny plates; once the dominant land animals)

Derivation:

Reptilia (class of cold-blooded air-breathing vertebrates with completely ossified skeleton and a body usually covered with scales or horny plates; once the dominant land animals)

reptilian (any cold-blooded vertebrate of the class Reptilia including tortoises, turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and extinct forms)

 Context examples 

The great reptilian hearts, however, each as large as a cushion, still lay there, beating slowly and steadily, with a gentle rise and fall, in horrible independent life.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A genus of retroviridae comprising endogenous sequences in mammals, related reticuloendotheliosis viruses of birds, and a reptilian species.

(Gammaretrovirus, NCI Thesaurus)

We're warm-blooded and agile in comparison with our reptilian relatives.

(What makes a mammal a mammal? Our spine, say scientists, National Science Foundation)

His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughout their spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thus we find such modern creatures as the tapir—an animal with quite a respectable length of pedigree—the great deer, and the ant-eater in the companionship of reptilian forms of jurassic type.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The indications would be consistent with the presence of a saber-toothed tiger, such as are still found among the breccia of our caverns; but the creature actually seen was undoubtedly of a larger and more reptilian character.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)