Other forms: cockatrices
A cockatrice is a legendary beast said to kill with its glance. The cockatrice's eye, slay the cockatrice, a cockatrice on the shield.
It was pictured as a cock with a serpent's tail, hatched from a cock's egg under a toad, and it is largely the same creature as the basilisk. It appears in older Bibles as a translation of a Hebrew word for a venomous snake.
1nouncockatriceA legendary beast said to kill with its glance.
“In the old legend, anyone who met the cockatrice's gaze fell dead on the spot.”
cockatrice is a legendary beast.
Old French cocatriz comes from Latin calcatrix, a treader, a mistranslation that got attached to the cock-like beast.
Latin
calcātrīx — female trampler, treader
Old French
cocatriz — basilisk, cockatrice
Middle English
cocatrice
English, today
cockatrice
Built from
From Middle English cocatrice, from Old French cocatriz (“basilisk, cockatrice”), from Latin calcātrīx (“female trampler, treader”), from Latin calcō (“to trample, to walk upon, to oppress”) + -trīx (“-ess: forming feminine agentives”), from calx (“heel”). Its eventual association with poultry influenced by cock (“rooster, male chicken”), q.v.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA