Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of camelopard.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin camēlopardalis, the spelling influenced by leopard. More at camelopard.

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Examples

  • The hero of Egypt has here carried his arms into a country inhabited by lions, cameleopards, apes, and elephants none of which animals are found in Nubia or Dóngola; the elephant and cameleopard inhabit the banks of the Nile towards Sennaar, the forests on the frontiers of Abyssinia, and the banks of the

    Travels in Nubia 2004

  • Caesar, in his third dictatorship, A.U.C. 708, showed a vast number of wild beasts, among which were four hundred lions and a cameleopard.

    De vita Caesarum Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

  • Clara here rushed upon them with her cameleopard gallop, sending her voice before her, 'Can you see them?'

    Dynevor Terrace: or, the clue of life — Volume 1 Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • 'Oh, no! he shan't -- I'll rescue him!' exclaimed Clara; and leaping up to her cameleopard attitude, she sprang forward, and, with a voice audible in an unlucky lull of the music, she exclaimed, 'Louis!

    Dynevor Terrace: or, the clue of life — Volume 1 Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • "Zarráf" (whence our word) from "Zarf" = walking hastily: the old "cameleopard" which originated the nursery idea of its origin.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • The Elgin marbles have suffered no abatement of their marvellous beauties; and the coat of the cameleopard is with out a blemish.

    How to See the British Museum in Four Visits W. Blanchard Jerrold 1855

  • A large bull cameleopard stood the nearest, every now and then turning his head to pluck a bunch of leaves from a branch which no other animal could have reached, but still apparently on the watch for danger.

    In the Wilds of Africa William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • I think they must have seen me, or perhaps they took me for a cameleopard or ostrich; for

    In the Wilds of Africa William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • They were aware that the elephant, rhinoceros, cameleopard, zebra, lion and many other strange beasts ranged over its sandy deserts; but very little more about them than the fact of their existence was known.

    Great African Travellers From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • I cannot recall a more delightful hour than that we passed in examining this curiosity, which was like handling and feeding, and playing with a living cameleopard, after having seen a dozen that were stuffed.

    A Residence in France Cooper, J Fenimore 1836

Comments

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  • Cameleopard is a variation of camelopard, an archaic noun for the giraffe. An avatar of Set, of Antiochus Epiphanes in E.A. Poe's Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Cameleopard and anthropomorphized in Percy Blysshe Shelley's Letter to Maria Gisborne, the contemporary cameleopard is far more inscrutable and variously dangerous, licentious, glacial, imperturbable, fabulous, comestible and nomadic. The modern cameleopard, as different from the contemporary as thorns are from villi, is agrarian and subject to anxiety and fragmentation when dropped from the shelf.

    December 2, 2006

  • Cool that someone already added info about this. :) I just found this in 1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and His School and the name caught my eye, before I realized it's a picture of a giraffe. Makes me wonder where "giraffe" came from (apparently Arabic).

    August 25, 2008