The other day I found myself thinking about animal
adjectives: words that end in –ine like elephantine and serpentine. The suffix –ine
is Latin and means “of or pertaining to.” So you’d expect anything described as
elephantine to be big while something serpentine might be winding. I wondered how
many of these adjectives I could think of off the top of my head, so I grabbed
a pencil and started writing: feline is catlike, canine is doggy. Porcine is
piggy, ovine is sheepish and bovine is like a cow. Lions are leonine, tigers are
tigrine and bears are ursine. I’d written down “formicary” (ant-like) and “apian”
(bee-like) before I noticed that not all of these words end in –ine. My phone
has a Google app so I started looking them up. I’d found “simian” (apish) and “papilionaceous”
(butterfly-like) before I realized I’d lost nearly two hours. Time flies when
you’re . . . wait. I just remembered another one.
No comments:
Post a Comment