manticore

/man"ti kawr', -kohr'/, n.

a legendary monster with a man's head, horns, a lion's body, and the tail of a dragon or, sometimes, a scorpion.

[1300-50; ME < L mantichoras < Gk, erroneous reading for martichóras < Iranian; cf. Old Persian martiya- man, Avestan x^var- devour, Persian mardom-khar < man-eating; prob. ult. alluding to the tiger, once common in the Caspian Sea region]

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▪ legendary animal

also spelled  mantichora,  manticora,  or  mantiger 

      a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore as a symbol of the devil. In Canadian author Robertson Davies (Davies, Robertson)'s The Manticore (1972), the protagonist dreams of a sibyl leading a manticore and examines his dream under Jungian analysis.

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