Raptor

How to spell raptor

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce raptor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does raptor mean?

1. nounA bird that hunts and feeds on other animals, seizing prey with its talons, such as an eagle, hawk, or owl.
2. nounA small to medium predatory dinosaur of the type with a curved claw and grasping forelimbs.

Raptor in a sentence

• The wildlife centre nurses each injured raptor back to health before release.

• The museum's new exhibit reconstructs a feathered raptor in mid-stride.

• A hooded raptor perched on the falconer's gloved arm.

• The film made the clever, pack-hunting raptor its most famous predator.

Where does raptor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin raptor, meaning 'one who seizes' or 'a robber', formed from the verb rapere, which literally meant 'to seize, snatch, or carry off by force'. The same rapere root sits behind a surprising family of English words, including 'rapture' (originally a seizing or carrying away of the spirit), 'rapid', and even 'ravish'. In modern English raptor settled into two main uses: ornithologists adopted it as the technical term for a bird of prey such as an eagle, hawk, or falcon, all of which seize their prey in their talons, and palaeontologists later applied it to a group of grasping, fast-moving predatory dinosaurs. The dinosaur sense surged into everyday speech in the 1990s through popular films, but it rests on the same idea of a creature that snatches and grips. Because the word keeps the Latin spelling intact, the trap is simply remembering the plain '-or' ending rather than the '-er' that English so often prefers.

How the word is built

• rapt- (from Latin rapere: to seize or snatch)
• -or (agent-noun suffix: one who does)