Other forms: reptiles
A reptile is a cold-blooded scaly animal that lays eggs on land. A reptile house, reptiles bask, a scaly reptile.
Cold-blooded is the wrong phrase — they do not make their own heat, so they take it from the sun, and a lizard on a rock is managing its temperature rather than resting. Birds are reptiles by descent, which is why the old grouping is being redrawn. The Latin means creeping.
1nounreptileA cold-blooded scaly animal that lays eggs on land.
“Snakes, lizards and crocodiles are all reptiles.”
reptile is an animal.
Latin reptilis means creeping, from repere, to crawl.
Latin
rēptile
Old French
reptile
Middle English
reptil
English, today
reptile
Built from
From Middle English reptil, from Old French reptile, from Latin rēptile, neuter of reptilis (“creeping”), from Latin rēpō (“to creep”), from Proto-Indo-European rep- (“to creep, slink”) (Pokorny; Watkins, 1969).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA