corkindrill
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit](This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Corruption of "crocodile"?”)
Noun
[edit]corkindrill (plural corkindrills)
- A mythological reptilian monster of legend, identified with the crocodile.
- 1958, Terence White, The Once and Future King[1], page 26:
- At this the bird became so nervous that it made a mess on Merlyn's head — the whole room was quite white with droppings — and flew off to perch on the farthest tip of the corkindrill's tail, out of reach.
- 2000, Nancy Kilpatrick, Thomas Roche, Graven images[2], page 119:
- Still, he did give her a good price for the creature, selling it to her under the mistaken impression that it was a corkindrill. Well, of course it was not a corkindrill, although a genuine corkindrill (another of Irene's finds) had shared its crate for approximately fifteen years.
- 2009, Roberta A. MacAvoy, Raphael[3], page 1:
- Other beasts, too, roamed at their graceful will across the landscape: the ox and the wide-horned aurochs, the slouching camelopard, the corkindrill — each animal as fat as a burgher and similarly complacent.