rhino

rhino

rhino

English (clipped from Greek rhinokerōs via Latin)

“Rhinoceros means nose-horn in Greek, and the animal's fate now depends on that horn”

The word 'rhino' is a shortening of 'rhinoceros,' which first appeared in English around 1398 in John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's encyclopedia. The full word came through Latin rhinoceros, borrowed from Greek ῥῑνόκερως (rhinokerōs). The Greek compound joined ῥίς (rhis, genitive rhinos, 'nose') with κέρας (keras, 'horn'), yielding a literal meaning of 'nose-horn.' Greek writers encountered the animal through Hellenistic accounts of India and North Africa.

The Greek rhinokerōs appears in Agatharchides of Cnidus, a geographer of the 2nd century BCE who documented the Red Sea coasts and the large animals that inhabited the African interior. He described a beast whose single horn grew from its nose rather than its forehead, as a horse's horn would in legend. Aristotle had catalogued similar animals from reported accounts decades before. The Greek name locked in the anatomical feature that made the animal most memorable to people who had never seen one.

The clipped form 'rhino' entered English print by 1884, when naturalists and hunters writing from southern Africa used it in field notes and dispatches. The shortening followed English's habit of trimming long compound nouns: hippopotamus became hippo, chimpanzee became chimp. But 'rhino' had also developed a slang meaning in 17th-century English, referring to money or coin, first recorded in 1688, whose connection to the animal remains debated. The animal sense eventually absorbed the slang completely.

Five species survive today: the white and black rhinos of Africa and the Indian, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos of Asia. The white rhino is not white and the black rhino is not black; both names derive from a mistranslation of Afrikaans 'wyd' (wide), describing the white rhino's broad, square lip. The Greek keras lives on in the word keratin, the protein composing the rhino's horn and human fingernails alike. The nose-horn that gave the animal its name is now the primary reason it is hunted to extinction.

Related Words

Today

The rhino's name has outlived most of the humans who named it. The Greek merchants who coined rhinokerōs are gone, the Roman writers who latinized it are gone, and the 19th-century hunters who shortened it to rhino are gone. Three of the five remaining species are critically endangered, and the Javan rhino numbers fewer than eighty individuals. The word has preserved its carrier better than its carriers have preserved the animal.

Conservation biologists now track rhino populations by GPS and satellite, but they still reach for the same Greek anatomy Agatharchides used in the 2nd century BCE. Nose-horn. The name will last longer than the animal unless we decide otherwise.

Explore more words

Frequently asked questions about rhino

What does rhino mean in Greek?

Rhino comes from the Greek rhinokerōs, meaning 'nose-horn.' The word combines rhinos (nose) and keras (horn), describing the animal's most distinctive feature: the horn growing from its nose rather than its head.

When did rhino enter the English language?

The full form rhinoceros entered English around 1398 in John Trevisa's translation of a medieval encyclopedia. The clipped form 'rhino' appeared in print by 1884, used by hunters and naturalists in southern Africa.

What language does rhinoceros come from?

Rhinoceros comes from Greek via Latin. The Greek word rhinokerōs was used by writers like Agatharchides of Cnidus in the 2nd century BCE to describe animals encountered in India and Africa. Rome borrowed it as rhinoceros, and English inherited it through Latin.

What does rhino mean today?

Today rhino refers to any of five species of large, thick-skinned mammals with one or two horns on their noses, native to Africa and Asia. Three species are critically endangered, largely due to poaching for their horns.