Word of the Day: May 17, 2009 - sphinx

sphinx (sfingks) - noun

A sphinx is " figure in Egyptian myth having the body of a lion and the head of a man, ram, or hawk."

First used in the written form around 1375–1425. The original Sphinx was a monster, half woman and half lion, which terrorized the country around Thebes in ancient Greece. According to legend, it would ambush travelers and ask them a riddle; and if they could not solve it, it killed them. One of its favorite methods was strangulation, and its name supposedly means "the strangler" - as if it were derived from Greek sphiggein, meaning "bind tight" (source of English sphincter). However, this account of its name sounds as mythological as the account of its existence, and a more likely explanation is perhaps that the word was derived from the name of Mount Phikion, not far from ancient Thebes.

One of the first yachts to carry a spinnaker sail, in the mid-1860s was the Sphinx, and it has been conjectured that its name (or rather a mispronunciation /spingks/) formed the basis of the term spanker, the name of another type of sail.

Photo by eviljohnius