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''drake'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''drake'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

drake - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

drake (plural drakes)

  • A male duck (animal).
    • ✤ A drake belonging to a chemist, having drunk water out of a copper vessel which had contained phosphorous, continued its amorous activities until death.1

Noun

drake (plural drakes)

  • (poetic) dragon
    • ✤ Clay caught sight of the drake ’ s wing outlined against the rising flames as it swept low over the desert.2
    • ✤ Hyponym: (fantasy) proto-drake
    • (fantasy, not universal) lesser draconic creature
  • beaked galley, or Viking warship
    • ✤ Synonyms: dragon, dragonship
  • (historical) small piece of artillery
    • ✤ Two or three shots, made at them by a couple of drakes, made them stagger.3
  • a fiery meteor (variously known as fiery serpents and dragons in many cultures)
    • c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665):
      • ✤ The moon’s my constant Mistresse
        & the lowlie owle my morrowe.
        The flaming Drake and yͤ Nightcrowe make
        mee musicke to my sorrowe.
  • (old) mayfly
    • ✤ Synonym: drakefly
    • ✤ Coordinate term: dragonfly
    • a mayfly used as fishing bait

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /dɹeɪk/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -eɪk

Etymology 1

🖼️ ➺

From Middle English drake (“male duck, drake”), from Old English ﹡draca, abbreviated form for Old English ﹡andraca (“male duck, drake”, literally “duck-king”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡anadrekō (“duck leader”). Cognate with Low German drake (“drake”), Dutch draak (“drake”), German Enterich (“drake”). More at annet.

Etymology 2

From Middle English drake (“dragon; Satan”), from Old English draca (“dragon, sea monster, huge serpent”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡drakō (“dragon”), from Latin dracō (“dragon”), from Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn, “serpent, giant seafish”), from δέρκομαι (dérkomai, “to see clearly”). Compare Middle Dutch drake and German Drache. Doublet of dragon.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 202: ↩

  2. 2016, Anthony Ryan, The Waking Fire: Book One of Draconis Memoria: ↩

  3. 1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon,, in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the[Sheldonian] Theater: ↩

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Secondary

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