Chameleon

How to spell chameleon

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce chameleon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chameleon mean?

1. nounA small tree-dwelling lizard able to change the colour of its skin and to move its eyes independently.
2. nounA person who readily changes attitude, behaviour, or appearance to suit the situation or company.

Chameleon in a sentence

• The chameleon gripped the branch and slowly shifted from green to brown.

• As a salesman he was a real chameleon, adjusting his manner to every client.

• At the reptile centre a chameleon swivelled one eye toward the visitors.

• The actor is such a chameleon that audiences rarely recognise him between roles.

Where does chameleon come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the Greek khamaileon, a compound built from khamai meaning 'on the ground' (and also 'dwarf') and leon meaning 'lion'; the ancient name therefore described something like a small 'ground lion', a fanciful label for the slow, big-headed lizard. Greek passed the word to Latin as chamaeleon, and it travelled on into Old French before reaching English in the late 1300s. Early English spellings wobbled considerably, but the form settled with that opening 'cha-' that preserves the Greek khamai element, which is precisely the part modern writers tend to mangle. The same khamai root appears in 'chamomile', literally the 'ground apple', so a curious speller can link the two. The famous modern sense, a person or thing that constantly changes to suit the surroundings, grew naturally from the lizard's celebrated colour-changing skin.

How the word is built

• chamai- (from Greek khamai: on the ground)
• leon (Greek: lion)
• -on (noun ending)