ἀνθόλοψ

The Late Greek antholops (ἀνθόλοψ) first appears in a text attributed to Eustathius of Antioch around 336 CE. He described it as a ferocious animal living along the Euphrates, with serrated horns that could cut through branches. The creature was almost certainly fictional — a bestiary invention stitched together from traveler's tales and theological symbolism.

The word passed into Medieval Latin as antalopus. Crusaders returning from the Levant in the 12th and 13th centuries used it loosely for the swift, horned animals they encountered in the deserts of Syria and Palestine. The mythical beast of Eustathius was gradually replaced by the real gazelle-like creatures bounding across the plains. Nobody corrected the name.

Old French took antelop from Latin, and English borrowed it by the early 1400s. The word referred vaguely to any swift, horned animal that was not a deer, a goat, or a cow. Naturalists in the 18th century formalized it. The family Antilopinae now contains roughly 91 species, from the tiny dik-dik to the giant eland.

The original Greek word may come from anthos ('flower') and ops ('eye') — 'flower-eyed,' describing the animal's large, beautiful eyes. Or it may not. The etymology is genuinely uncertain. What is certain is that a mythical tree-sawing beast from a 4th-century sermon lent its name to some of the most graceful animals on earth.