anaconda
The anacondas are a group of semiaquatic constrictor snakes native to South America. While the name can be applied to any of the species in the genus Eunectes, it is commonly used to specifically refer to the green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, the largest snake in the world by weight. (The reticulated python of Southeast Asia is longer.)
The name anaconda, however, is not of South American origin. Its origin is not known for certain, but it probably comes from the Sinhalese heṇakandayā (lightning/whip snake), and the name was first applied to a snake of Sri Lanka. Many sources point to Yule and Burnell hesitantly suggesting in their 1886 Hobson-Jobson that the name comes from the Tamil designation anaikondra, meaning “killed an elephant,” but they knew of no instances of the Tamil term being applied to a snake. The 1903 second edition of Hobson-Jobson, edited by William Crooke, includes the Sinhalese origin and says that one is “more plausible.”
The name anaconda first appears as a Latin coinage in John Ray’s 1693 Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini Generis:
Serpens Indicus Bubalinus, ANACANDAIA Zeylonensibus, id est Bubalorum aliorumque jumentorum membra conterens.
(Indian Buffalo Snake, ANACANDAIA Zeylonensibus, that is crushing the limbs of buffalos and other animals)
Ray relied upon an earlier description of what was probably a reticulated python by German physician and naturalist Andreas Cleyer (1634–c. 1698), who had traveled widely in Asia. Ray’s Latin description of the snake, taken from Cleyer, was translated by Charles Owen in 1742, which is the earliest appearance of the name in English:
The Anacandia, a Ceylonick Serpent of monstrous Corpulence, being in longitude about 25 Foot. D. Cleyerus, who accounts for this gigantick Serpent, says, he saw one of them open’d, in whose Belly was found a whole Stag, with all his integral Parts: In another they found a wild Goat; and in a third, a Porcupine arm’d with all its Darts and Prickles. Serpents of this nature have often fallen in our way, by which we may imagine, that there is a vast spread of them over the Earth. Mr. Ray from Cleyrus gives this account of the Monster——Tho’ the Throat seems narrow, yet ’tis very extensible, and the Facts have been confirm’d by Experience. When the Prey is catch’d he wraps himself about it, takes it by the Nose, sucks the Blood, and soon reduces it to a Hodge-Podge; after he has broken the Bones in pieces, that emits a Sound like a Gun, ibid. And in doing all this he spends two days.
Anaconda moved from scientific nomenclature into the popular imagination with a lurid and fictional account of a snake, again probably intended to describe a reticulated python, eating a tiger written by an R. Edwin that appeared in the Edinburgh Weekly Magazine on 17 August 1768. It is clearly fiction, because not only is the description of how the snake eats fanciful, but tigers have never been native to Sri Lanka. The title of Edwin’s piece reads:
Description of the ANACONDA, a monstrous species of Serpent; in a letter from and English Gentleman, many years resident in the Island of Ceylon, in the East-Indies.
The account reads, in part:
The Ceylonese seemed to know the creature well; they call it Anacondo, and talked of eating its flesh when they caught it, as they had no small hopes of this; for, they say, when one of these creatures chuses a tree for its dwelling, he seldom quits it of a long time.
[…]
There are a great plenty of tygers, you must know, in this country; of these, of a monstrous size, not lower than a common heifer, as he went along, came at length under our serpent’s tree. In a moment we heard a dreadful rustling in the tree, and, swift as thought, the serpent dropt upon him, seized him across the back, a little below the shoulders, with his horrible mouth, and taking in a piece of the back bigger than a man’s head. The creature roared with agony, and, to our unspeakable terror, was running with his enemy towards us; his course, however, was soon stopped; for the nimble adversary winding his body three or four times around the body of his prey, girt him so violently, that he fell down in agony. The moment the serpent had fixed his folds, he let go the back of the creature, and raising and twining around his head, opened his horrid mouth to its full extent, and seized the whole face of the tyger in it, biting and grinding him in a most horrid manner, and at once choking him and tearing him to pieces.
In popular English usage, anaconda came to be applied to any large, constricting snake. For instance, there is this example of overwrought prose from Benjamin Disraeli’s first novel, Vivian Grey, published in 1826:
“Calm myself! Oh! it is madness; very, very madness! ’tis the madness of the fascinated bird; ’tis the madness of the murderer who is voluntarily broken on the wheel; ’tis the madness of the fawn, that gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda’s eye; ’tis the madness of a woman who flies to the arms of her—Fate;” and here she sprang like a tigress round Vivian’s neck, her long light hair bursting from its bands, and clustering down her shoulders.
The name was first applied to the South American snake by French naturalist Francois-Marie Daudin in 1802, writing about the le boa anacondo in the fifth volume of his natural history of reptiles. And English application of the name to the South American reptile is found in the 1836 Penny Cyclopedia:
Boa Scytale and Boa murina of Linnæus, Boa aquatica of Prince Maximilian. This species referred to by Linnæus under two specific names, according to Cuvier, is the Boa aquatica of Prince Maximilian and the Anaconda according to the same authority. Mr. Bennett observes in “The Tower Menagerie” that the name of Anaconda, like that of Boa Constrictor, has been popularly applied to all the larger and more powerful snakes. He adds that the word appears to be of Ceylonese origin, and applies it to the Python Tigris.
Brownish, with a double series of roundish black blotches all down the back. The lateral spots annular and ocellated, the disks being white, surrounded by blackish rings. Inhabits South America. The trivial name Murina was given to it from its being said to lie in wait for mice, and Seba has given a representation of it about to dart upon an American mouse, which he says is its usual food.
Over time the name anaconda became increasingly associated with the South American species and ceased to be used for the Asian snakes.
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. anaconda, n.
Bennett, Edward Turner. The Tower Menagerie. London: Robert Jennings, 1829, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Daudin, Francois-Marie. Histoire Naturelle, Génerale et Particulière des Reptiles, vol. 5. Paris: F. Dufart, 1802, 161–67. Archive.org.
Disraeli, Benjamin. Vivian Grey, vol. 2 of 5. London: Henry Colburn, 1826, 73. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Edwin, R. “Description of the ANACONDA.” The Weekly Magazine, or, Edinburgh Amusement, 18 August 1768, 201–06 at 201 and 203–04. ProQuest: Historical Periodicals.
Owen, Charles. An Essay Towards a Natural History of Serpents. London: John Gray, 1742, 114. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. anaconda, n.
Penny Cyclopedia, vol. 5 of 27, London: Charles Knight, 1836, s.v. boa, 26–27. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Ray, John. Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini Generis. London: S. Smith and B. Walford, 1693, 332. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India (1886). Kate Teltscher, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, 62–64.
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases. London: John Murray, 1886, s.v. anaconda, n., 17. Archive.org.
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, second edition. William Crooke, ed. London: John Murray, 1903, s.v. anaconda, n., 24–25. Archive.org.
Photo credit: MKAMPIS, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
