Echidna


[ih-kid-nuh] /ɪˈkɪd nə/

noun
1.
Also called spiny anteater. any of several insectivorous monotremes of the genera Tachyglossus, of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea, and Zaglossus, of New Guinea, that have claws and a slender snout and are covered with coarse hair and long spines.
/ɪˈkɪdnə/
noun (pl) -nas, -nae (-niː)
1.
any of the spine-covered monotreme mammals of the genera Tachyglossus of Australia and Zaglossus of New Guinea: family Tachyglossidae. They have a long snout and claws for hunting ants and termites Also called spiny anteater
n.

Australian egg-laying hedgehog-like mammal, 1847, usually explained as from Greek ekhidna “snake, viper,” from ekhis “snake,” from PIE *angwhi- “snake, eel” (cf. Norwegian igle, Old High German egala, German Egel “leech,” Latin anguis “serpent, snake”).

But this sense is difficult to reconcile with this animal (unless it is a reference to the ant-eating tongue), and the name seems more properly to belong to Latin echinus, Greek ekhinos “sea-urchin,” originally “hedgehog” (in Greek also “sharp points”), which Watkins explains as “snake-eater,” from ekhis “snake.”

Constraint logic programming embedded in an object-oriented language. The syntax is an extension of Edinburgh Prolog.
[“Hierarchical Arc Consistency Applied to Numeric Processing in Constraint Logic Programming”, G. Sidebottom et al, TR-91-06, CSS-IS, Simon Fraser U, and Comp Intell 8(4) (1992)].
(ftp://cs.sfu.edu/pub/ecl/papers).
E-mail: .
(1994-12-08)

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  • Echinate

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  • Echini

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  • Echino

    1. a combining form meaning “prickly; spiny,” used in the formation of compound words: echinulate. 2. a combining form representing in compound words: echinoid. combining form 1. indicating spiny or prickly: echinoderm echino- or echin- pref. Spiny: echinococcosis.


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