Alligator

How to spell alligator

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce alligator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does alligator mean?

1. nounA large semi-aquatic reptile with a broad snout, native chiefly to the rivers and swamps of the southern United States and parts of China.

Alligator in a sentence

• The tour guide warned visitors not to feed the alligator near the boardwalk.

• A young alligator basked on the muddy bank of the river.

Where does alligator come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word is a fossilised mistake, and a charming one. It comes from the Spanish phrase el lagarto, meaning 'the lizard', which Spanish explorers in the Americas applied to the large reptiles they encountered. The lizard word itself descends from the Latin lacertus or lacerta, which simply meant 'lizard' and, curiously, was also used for the muscle of the upper arm because of its lizard-like shape. English speakers in the late 1500s heard el lagarto as a single chunk and absorbed the Spanish article 'el' right into the noun, producing forms like 'aligarto' before the spelling settled on alligator by the 1700s. That swallowed article is exactly why the word begins with a doubled letter pattern and ends in -or rather than the -er a writer might expect.

How the word is built

• From Spanish el lagarto (the lizard), reanalysed in English as a single word; modern spelling treats al-li-ga-tor as an opaque whole rather than separable parts