Griffin

How to spell griffin

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce griffin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does griffin mean?

1. nounA mythical creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion, often shown guarding treasure.

Griffin in a sentence

• A carved stone griffin crouched above the castle gate.

• The heraldic shield featured a golden griffin on a red field.

Where does griffin come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the Greek gryps (genitive grypos), which described something hook-nosed or curved, a fitting name for a beast imagined with the sharply hooked beak of an eagle. The Greeks pictured this creature with the head and wings of an eagle joined to the body of a lion, and stories placed it guarding treasures of gold. The term passed into Latin as gryphus or gryps, and from there into Old French as grifoun, which is how it reached Middle English in the 1200s. The spelling has wandered a great deal over the centuries, appearing as gryphon, griffon, and griffin, and the modern doubled f in griffin reflects the French and Latin forms rather than the original single Greek p sound. Because the elegant variant gryphon survives alongside it, writers sometimes hesitate over whether the everyday spelling takes a y or an i.

How the word is built

• griff- (from Greek grypos: hook-nosed, curved)
• -in (noun ending)

British and American spelling

Griffin is the American spelling. British English spells it gryphon.