Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various pterosaurs of the group Pterodactyloidea of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, having a short tail or no tail, and including the pteranodon.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An extinct reptile of the genus Pterodactylus or order Pterosauria; a pterosaurian; an ornithosaurian; a flying-dragon. Also
pterodactylian .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Paleon.) An extinct flying reptile; one of the Pterosauria. See
Illustration in Appendix.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various
small , mostlytailless ,extinct flying reptiles of theorder Pterosauria thatexisted during theJurassic andCretaceous periods
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun extinct flying reptile
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Side note, the music played when Toth-Amon floats off the dark tower balcony and hand-animates into that rad mist-pterodactyl is the some of the best music out of both Conans.
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A mere explanation that a pterodactyl was a kind of flying reptile belonging to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods was insufficient.
DEVELOPMENT A NOVEL BY W. BRYHER WITH A PREFACE BY AMY LOWELL 1920
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No matter a persons' level of scientific knowledge most can identify a picture of a flying reptile as a "pterodactyl".
Archive 2009-07-01 Weapon of Mass Imagination 2009
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No matter a persons' level of scientific knowledge most can identify a picture of a flying reptile as a "pterodactyl".
Life's Time Capsule: Pterosaur Gallery Weapon of Mass Imagination 2009
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I'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings.
Mark Twain`s speeches; with an introduction by William Dean Howells. 1910
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Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar.
Mark Twain`s speeches; with an introduction by William Dean Howells. 1910
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It’s essentially the same as my version, but instead of having our heroes Basil and Louise in little, white boxes, they’re riding the pterodactyl, which is exactly where they should be.
Attack of the Volcano Monkeys Michael May 2008
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Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar.
Mark Twain's Speeches Mark Twain 1872
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I'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings.
Mark Twain's Speeches Mark Twain 1872
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You see, there's this sort of dragonlike flying reptile that used to exist, called a pterodactyl, and this is a flying moon, so - "
Yon Ill Wind Anthony, Piers 1996
chained_bear commented on the word pterodactyl
"Pterodactyls or pterodactyloids (meaning "winged finger") were flying, prehistoric reptiles. They were a subgroup of pterosaurs and were not dinosaurs." (As I'm sure ptero would tell us.) (enchantedlearning.com)
August 29, 2008
pterodactyl commented on the word pterodactyl
I've known since about age 5 -- my dinosaur phase -- that pterodactyls are not dinosaurs. (And being 5, I would go around telling this to everyone. Five-year-olds are masters of the non sequitur).
What I didn't find out until recently is that, while some pterosaurs were quite large, pterodactylus was fairly small.
Quoting Wikipedia:
I feel diminished. I feel inadequate. I feel like I need to go out and buy a huge prehistoric SUV to compensate.
September 1, 2008
bilby commented on the word pterodactyl
An off-road Guzzladon, maybe? How about a list of Prehistoric SUV Names instead?
September 1, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word pterodactyl
UAV! Now we know what ptero's REALLY been up to lately...
March 12, 2010
ruzuzu commented on the word pterodactyl
*pays ptoll pto pthe pterodactyl*
December 2, 2011