Pronounced: FRAN-juh-bull, adj
Notes: I didn’t know this word existed
Yesterday’s word
The word manticore is “a legendary animal with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion”
First usage
Our word came into English in the early to mid-1300s
Background / Comments
I think I’ve played some computer game that had a manticore as a creature to be dispatched, but I’m not sure. Our word came into Middle English from the Latin word mantichōrās, which came from a mis-reading of the Greek word martichṓras (note that the ‘r’ was changed to an ‘n’), which came from the Persian word mardom-khar (man-eating), which is made from martiya (man) and xvar (devour). It is possible that the word originally referred to some kind of man-eating tiger.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 