The corpus record — Latin

echidna

echidna · f

an adder

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Metamorphoses 4 · 0.52/10k
Fasti 1 · 0.32/10k

What it meant

ĕchidna — Lewis & Short

ĕchidna, ae, f., = e)/xidna,

I an adder, viper. The Furies were said to have them twined in their hair; hence: stipite te Stygio tumidisque adflavit Echidnis E tribus una soror, Ov. M. 10, 313.—

II Nom. prop.

A Lernaea, the Lernaean hydra, killed by Hercules, Ov. M. 9, 69; 158; id. F. 5, 405.—

B A monster, half woman and half serpent, the mother of Cerberus, Ov. M. 4, 501.—Hence, Echidnēus, a, um, adj., of Echidna: canis, i. e. Cerberus, Ov. M. 7, 408.

In the wild

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.