boa constrictor
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See also: Boa constrictor
English
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from New Latin Boa constrictor.
Noun
boa constrictor (plural boa constrictors)
- A large tropical American snake, Boa constrictor, that kills its prey by squeezing them.
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- After him followed a blesbok, then an impala, then a koodoo, then more goats, and many other animals, including a girl sewn up in the shining scaly hide of a boa-constrictor, several yards of which trailed along the ground behind her.
- (loosely) Any large python.
- 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 95:
- We found boa constrictors or pythons, whip snakes, the handsome but deadly tiger snake, so called from the peculiar marks on its skin[.]
Usage notes
- The boa constrictor is the only extant animal whose English common name is the same as its scientific (taxonomic) name. Tyrannosaurus rex, an extinct species, also shares this phenomenon.
Translations
snake
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