What is "dragon"

dragon \drag"on\ (dr[a^]g"[u^]n), n. [F. dragon, L. draco, fr. Gr. dra`kwn, prob. fr. de`rkesqai, dra`kein, to look (akin to Skr. dar[,c] to see), and so called from its terrible eyes. Cf. Drake a dragon, Dragoon.]

1. (Myth.) A fabulous animal, generally represented as a monstrous winged serpent or lizard, with a crested head and enormous claws, and regarded as very powerful and ferocious.

   The dragons which appear in early paintings and sculptures are invariably representations of a winged crocodile.
   --Fairholt.

   Note: In Scripture the term dragon refers to any great monster, whether of the land or sea, usually to some kind of serpent or reptile, sometimes to land serpents of a powerful and deadly kind. It is also applied metaphorically to Satan.

   Thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. -- Ps. lxxiv. 13.

   Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. -- Ps. xci. 13.

   He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.
   --Rev. xx.

2. 2. A fierce, violent person, esp. a woman.
   --Johnson.

3. (Astron.) A constellation of the northern hemisphere figured as a dragon; Draco.

4. A luminous exhalation from marshy grounds, seeming to move through the air as a winged serpent.

5. (Mil. Antiq.) A short musket hooked to a swivel attached to a soldier's belt; -- so called from a representation of a dragon's head at the muzzle.
   --Fairholt.

6. (Zo["o]l.) A small arboreal lizard of the genus Draco, of several species, found in the East Indies and Southern Asia. Five or six of the hind ribs, on each side, are prolonged and covered with weblike skin, forming a sort of wing. These prolongations aid them in making long leaps from tree to tree. Called also flying lizard.

7. (Zo["o]l.) A variety of carrier pigeon.

8. (Her.) A fabulous winged creature, sometimes borne as a charge in a coat of arms. Note: Dragon is often used adjectively, or in combination, in the sense of relating to, resembling, or characteristic of, a dragon. Dragon arum (Bot.), the name of several species of Aris[ae]ma, a genus of plants having a spathe and spadix. See Dragon root(below). Dragon fish (Zo["o]l.), the dragonet. Dragon fly (Zo["o]l.), any insect of the family Libellulid[ae]. They have finely formed, large and strongly reticulated wings, a large head with enormous eyes, and a long body; -- called also mosquito hawks. Their larv[ae] are aquatic and insectivorous. Dragon root (Bot.), an American aroid plant ( Aris[ae]ma Dracontium); green dragon. Dragon's blood, a resinous substance obtained from the fruit of several species of Calamus, esp. from Calamus Rotang and Calamus Draco, growing in the East Indies. A substance known as dragon's blood is obtained by exudation from Drac[ae]na Draco; also from Pterocarpus Draco, a tree of the West Indies and South America. The color is red, or a dark brownish red, and it is used chiefly for coloring varnishes, marbles, etc. Called also Cinnabar Gr[ae]corum. Dragon's head.

   1. (Bot.) A plant of several species of the genus Dracocephalum. They are perennial herbs closely allied to the common catnip.

   2. (Astron.) The ascending node of a planet, indicated, chiefly in almanacs, by the symbol ?. The deviation from the ecliptic made by a planet in passing from one node to the other seems, according to the fancy of some, to make a figure like that of a dragon, whose belly is where there is the greatest latitude; the intersections representing the head and tail; -- from which resemblance the denomination arises.
      --Encyc. Brit.

      Dragon shell (Zo["o]l.), a species of limpet.

      Dragon's skin, fossil stems whose leaf scars somewhat resemble the scales of reptiles; -- a name used by miners and quarrymen.
      --Stormonth.

      Dragon's tail (Astron.), the descending node of a planet, indicated by the symbol ?. See Dragon's head (above).

      Dragon's wort (Bot.), a plant of the genus Artemisia ( Artemisia dracunculus).

      Dragon tree (Bot.), a West African liliaceous tree ( Drac[ae]na Draco), yielding one of the resins called dragon's blood. See Drac[ae]na.

      Dragon water, a medicinal remedy very popular in the earlier half of the 17th century. ``Dragon water may do good upon him.''
      --Randolph (1640).

      Flying dragon, a large meteoric fireball; a bolide.

early 13c., from Old French dragon, from Latin draconem (nominative draco) "huge serpent, dragon," from Greek drakon (genitive drakontos) "serpent, giant seafish," apparently from drak-, strong aorist stem of derkesthai "to see clearly," from PIE *derk- "to see." Perhaps the literal sense is "the one with the (deadly) glance."\n

\nThe young are dragonets (14c.). Obsolete drake "dragon" is an older borrowing of the same word. Used in the Bible to translate Hebrew tannin "a great sea-monster," and tan, a desert mammal now believed to be the jackal.

n. 1 A legendary serpentine or reptilian creature. 2 # In Western mythology, a gigantic beast, typically reptilian with leathery bat-like wings, lion-like claws, scaly skin and a serpent-like body, often a monster with fiery breath. 3 # In Eastern mythology, a large, snake-like monster with the eyes of a hare, the horns of a stag and the claws of a tiger, usually beneficent. 4 An animal of various species that resemble a dragon in appearance: 5 # (context obsolete English) A very large snake; a python. 6 # Any of various agamid lizards of the genera ''Draco'', ''Physignathus'' or (taxlink Pogona genus noshow=1). 7 # A Komodo dragon. 8 (context astronomy with definite article often capitalized English) The constellation Draco. 9 (context pejorative English) An unpleasant woman; a harridan. 10 (context with definite article often capitalized English) The (historical) Chinese empire or the People's Republic of China. 11 (context figuratively English) Something very formidable or dangerous. 12 A luminous exhalation from marshy ground, seeming to move through the air like a winged serpent. 13 (context military historical English) A short musket hooked to a swivel attached to a soldier's belt; so called from a representation of a dragon's head at the muzzle. 14 A variety of carrier pigeon.

1. n. a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings [syn: firedrake]

2. a fiercely vigilant and unpleasant woman [syn: tartar]

3. a faint constellation twisting around the north celestial pole and lying between Ursa Major and Cepheus [syn: Draco]

4. any of several small tropical Asian lizards capable of gliding by spreading winglike membranes on each side of the body [syn: flying dragon, flying lizard]

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically scaled or fire-spewing; with serpentine, reptilian and avian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons:

• European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Balkans and Western Asian mythologies. Most are depicted as reptilian creatures with animal-level intelligence, are uniqely sexrupeds (i.e. four legs and a detached set of wings).
• Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian and South Asian countries. Most are depicted as serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence, and are quadrupeds (i.e. four legs and wingless).

The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word dragon and Latin word draco derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".

J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium features dragons closely based on those of European legend.

Besides dragon (derived from French), Tolkien variously used the terms drake (the original English term, from Old English draca, in turn from Latin draco and Greek δράκων) and worm (from Old English wyrm, "serpent", "dragon").

The Dragon is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dragon is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 辰, pronounced chen.

It has been proposed by one academic researcher that the Earthly Branch character may have been associated with scorpions; it may have symbolized the star Antares.

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits.

Dragon may also refer to:

The Dragon is an O.D. Hopkins steel roller coaster located at Adventureland in Altoona, Iowa, near Des Moines.

The Dragon made its debut on May 12, 1990, during Adventureland's sixteenth full season. It cost an estimated $2.1 million to build The Dragon. It was Adventureland's only coaster which loops completely upside down until the "Monster" opened on June 4, 2016.

Dragon is an adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the 10th book featuring the author’s primary protagonist, Dirk Pitt. In 1945, a B-29 bomber carrying a third nuclear bomb to Japan is shot down over the sea off the coast of Japan. In 1993, terrorists want to restore Japan's former glory by taking out the United States economy by planting nuclear bombs.

Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products; Dungeon is the other. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The final printed issue was #359 in September 2007. Shortly after the last print issue shipped in mid-August 2007, Wizards of the Coast (part of Hasbro, Inc.), the publication's current intellectual property rightsholder, relaunched Dragon as an online magazine, continuing on the numbering of the print edition. The last published issue was No. 430 in December 2013.

A digital publication called Dragon+, which replaces the Dragon magazine, launched in 2015. It is created by Dialect in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast, and restarted the numbering system for issues at No. 1.

In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game, dragons are an iconic type of monstrous creature used as adversaries or, less commonly, allies of player characters. As a group, D&D dragons are loosely based upon dragons from a wide range of fictional and mythological sources.

In D&D, dragons are depicted as any of various species of large, intelligent, magical, reptilian beasts, each typically defined by a combination of their demeanor and either the color of their scales or their elemental affinity. For example, a commonly presented species of dragon is the red dragon, which is named for its red scales, and known for its evil and greedy nature, as well as its ability to breathe fire.

Dragon is a rock band which was formed in Auckland, New Zealand, in January 1972 and relocated later to Sydney, Australia in May 1975. They were originally fronted by singer Marc Hunter and are currently led by his brother, bass player/vocalist Todd Hunter. They performed and released material under the name Hunter in Europe and the United States during 1987.

Keyboard player Paul Hewson wrote or co-wrote most of the group's 1970s hits: "April Sun in Cuba" peaked at #2 on the 1977 Australian singles chart; "Are You Old Enough?" reached #1 in 1978; and "Still in Love with You" reached #15 also in 1978. Later hits, from when the band re-grouped in the 1980s, were written by other band members, often working with outside associates: The Hunter brothers, with Todd's partner, Johanna Pigott, wrote "Rain," a #2 hit in 1983, while other, more minor hits were written by the Hunters and/or Alan Mansfield, frequently in collaboration with any combination of Pigott, Mansfield's partner Sharon O'Neill, Marc Hunter's partner Wendy Hunter, or producers Todd Rundgren and David Hirschfelder.

The name Dragon came from a consultation of I Ching cards by early band vocalist Graeme Collins.

Dragon have endured tragedy, adversity and notoriety, and during the course of the band's earlier career, several members died from drug-related causes. Problems began soon after their arrival in Sydney in late 1975, when all their equipment was stolen. Several months later, in 1976, drummer Neil Storey died of a heroin overdose; Paul Hewson of a drug overdose in 1985 and Marc Hunter of smoking-related oesophageal cancer in 1998. Several members of the group including Hewson and Marc Hunter were heavy heroin users during the band's heyday, and The Stewart Royal Commission (1980–1983) which investigated the Mr. Asia drug syndicate obtained evidence that Dragon members were clients. Two members were involved in a serious car crash in 1977, where Paul Hewson's neck was in a brace as well as having a broken arm and Robert Taylor needed plastic surgery, and Hewson also suffered from debilitating scoliosis and arthritis, the pain of which reportedly contributed to his heroin use. The band also undertook a famously disastrous 1978 tour of the USA, supporting Johnny Winter, which ended when Marc Hunter abused the Texan audience as " faggots" and the band were pelted off stage, while Winter's band were said to have taken bets about how long it would be before Hunter was shot. On 1 July 2008, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) recognised Dragon's iconic status when they were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.

Dragon is the eighth book in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, published in 1998 by Tor Books. It is both the second and fourth book of the series in chronological order, largely occurring after Taltos and before Yendi, with brief interludes taking place shortly after the events of Yendi. Following the trend of the Vlad Taltos books, it is named after one of the Great Houses in Brust's fantasy world of Dragaera and features that House as an important element to its plot.

Dragon (Ru:Драгон Мотор Компани) is a Russian car manufacturer based in Saint Petersburg that makes offroad and tunes cars. There are only two known models, the Dragon Astero and the Dragon Jump! Both are made from UAZ, GAZ, and VAZ components and assemblies.

Dragon is the thirteenth studio album by Japanese band Loudness. It was released in 1998 only in Japan.

The Dragon ( Sumerian: Ušum or Ushum) was one of the warriors slain by Ninurta, patron god of Lagash, in Sumerian mythology. Its body was hung on the seat of his chariot according to the ancient source.

The Dragon is a two-stage French solid propellant sounding rocket used for high altitude research. Its first stage was a Stromboli engine (diameter 56 cm) which burned 675 kg of fuel in 16 s and so produced a maximum thrust of 88 kN. A Belier engine was used as the upper stage. It belonged thereby to a family of solid-propellant rockets derived from the Belier, including the Centaure, the Dauphin and the Eridan. A payload of 30 to 120 kg could be carried on parabolic with apogees between 440 km (270 mi) (Dragon 2B) and 4560 km (340 mi)(Dragon III) The Dragon was built in several versions including the Dragon-2B, and Dragon-3, Dragons have been launched from Andøya, Norway; Biscarrosse, France; Dumont d'Urville, Antartica; Chamical, Argentina; Hammaguir, Algeria; Kerguelen Islands; Kourou, French Guiana; Mar Chiquita, Argentina; Salto di Quirra, Sardinia; Sonmiani, Pakistan; Thumba, India; and Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland.

Dragon is a spacecraft developed by SpaceX, an American private space transportation company based in Hawthorne, California. Dragon is launched into space by the SpaceX Falcon 9 two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle, and SpaceX is developing a crewed version called the Dragon 2.

During its maiden flight in December 2010, Dragon became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to be recovered successfully from orbit. On 25 May 2012, a cargo variant of Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with and attach to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX is contracted to deliver cargo to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program, and Dragon began regular cargo flights in October 2012. With the Dragon spacecraft and the Orbital ATK Cygnus, NASA seeks to increase its partnerships with domestic commercial aviation and aeronautics industry.

Dragon is Jake Shimabukuro's fourth U.S. solo album. It was released in October 2005.

The album peaked at #5 on Billboard's Top World Music Albums in 2005. It garnered Shimabukuro the Favorite Entertainer of the Year award at the 2006 Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, and Best Rock Album at the 2006 Hawaii Music Awards.

The AllMusic review summarized Dragon by saying, "Aside from his versatile playing, the collection's strength lies in its unpredictability from track to track. ... You can feel the island breezes here and there, but Shimabukuro's approach to his native instrument is equally at home on the gritty streets of Manhattan."

Dragon is a stream cipher developed at the Information Security Institute by Ed Dawson, Kevin Chen, Matt Henricksen, William Millan, Leonie Simpson, HoonJae Lee, and SangJae Moon.

The cipher is a Phase 3 Focus candidate for the eSTREAM project. The cipher is targeted for fast software implementations and versions with different key lengths exists. The version selected for Phase 3 is Dragon-128. It is not Patented.

Dragon has not been successfully attacked to date, but Cho and Pieprzyk found biases within the primary non-linear component of the cipher. This suggests that the security of the cipher is weaker than intended by its designers.

thumb|Dragon racing in 2008.

The Dragon is a one-design keelboat designed by Norwegian Johan Anker in 1929. In 1948 the Dragon became an Olympic Class, a status it retained until the Munich Olympics in 1972. The Dragon's long keel and elegant metre-boat lines remain unchanged, but today Dragons are constructed using the latest technology to make the boat durable and easy to maintain. GRP construction was introduced in 1973 and the rigging has been regularly updated.

The Dragon class is actively represented in over 26 countries on 5 continents. There were 1,444 boats registered in 2004 and the number of boats built has averaged 45 per year. There are many more which are used for day sailing. The World Championships are held in every odd year and the European Championships are held annually. The Gold Cup, which can only be held in certain specified European countries, is unique in that all six races count without discard. It is held annually and often attracts over 100 entries, usually starting in one fleet.

A strong Class Association manages the class rules carefully to ensure safety, high quality and uniformity. Spars and sails have a wide range of adjustment during racing, allowing a skillful crew to optimize the boat for any conditions. Crew weight limits, and restrictions on hiking out allow the Dragon to be raced successfully by a range of ages and both genders. It is possible to tow the Dragon behind many vehicles. It is often dry-sailed. It may be raced against boats of other classes, employing a Portsmouth Yardstick handicap of 986 or a D-PN of 89.5.

Dragon is a 2011 Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts film directed by Peter Chan, and starring Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei. Yen also served as the film's action director. It premiered on 13 May 2011 at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival in the Midnight Screenings category. Donnie Yen and Peter Chan presided over the lighting of a billboard for Dragon that broke the Guinness Book of World Records for its size, 3591 square metres, previously held by a poster for a Michael Jackson album.

Dragon is a 2006 action/ fantasy film created by the independent film group The Asylum.

Dragon is a Canadian stop-motion children's television program which is based on the books by best-selling children's author Dav Pilkey. The show first aired in Canada in 2004.

As described by Qubo:

Starring Frank Meschkuleit as Narrator / Character Voices

DRAGON:

Executive Producers Vivianne Morin Greg Dummett Jan Bonath Helmut Fischer Lorraine Richard

Producers Greg Dummett Wonman Chung Jan Bonath Louise Richard

Line Producer Louise Richard

Writers Cathy Moss Bernice Vanderlaan Steven Westren Aline Gilmore

Director for Canada Philip Marcus

Directors for Germany Thomas Schneider-Trumpp Axel Sucrow

Directors for Korea Kyung-il Hwang Su-Wee Moon

The Dragon series is a tetralogy of fantasy novels by Chinese American author Laurence Yep. Yep had already written several books including the Newbery Honor novel Dragonwings by 1980, when, after undertaking careful research, he decided to adapt Chinese mythology into a fantasy form, something he had always wanted to do since he had sold his first science fiction story at 18. He "tried to stay true to the spirit" of these myths, but did not try "to keep their exact details". The "perfect vehicle" he chose was a folktale in which the Monkey King captured a river spirit who had flooded an entire city, which he at first tried to conceive in picture book form. However, he kept questioning the motivations of the river spirit, whom he had renamed Civet. This resulted in the realization, as his outline ballooned exponentially from eight to 800 pages, that he would need a series as opposed to just one book to tell her story.

The story then evolved into one in which the Monkey King pursued Civet into "our reality", resulting in "several normal children from our universe" being taken back into theirs. Yep had completed several drafts of this version when "toward the end of that version there was a special pair - a dragon and her boy - who stole the scene whenever they were on stage". He realized that he had to nearly start over, this time structuring the story around these two, who became Shimmer and Thorn. This proved to be just the start, as Yep continued to incorporate more material and mythology into the later books based on further research and inspiration. Part of the process involved changing the narration from Shimmer to the Monkey King with the third book, Dragon Cauldron. Yep has said of Shimmer that he had "never written about a character quite so independent, even demanding".

Yep wrote the series over a twelve-year period. It is likely that he wrote each book at the same time he was writing others including his autobiography, as he frequently writes several books simultaneously, but in different genres as he often gets writer's block. Dragon of the Lost Sea for example, was written at the same time that he wrote The Mark Twain Murders. During this time, Yep's being able to settle into his characters such as Shimmer, who has been described as "opinionated, arrogant, and has a quick temper that sometimes makes it very difficult to be her friend", created some strain with his wife, fellow author Joanne Ryder, as at times the "dragon" in him would emerge.

Dragon, in comics, may refer to:

• Dragon, the leading character in the Image Comics title Savage Dragon
• Dragon (DC Comics), a DC Comics character
• Dragon, a member of Gen13
• Dragon Comics, a Japanese comic magazine
• Richard Dragon, a Marvel Comics character
• Dragon Man, a Marvel Comics character

It may also refer to:

• Dragonball, a Japanese manga
• Dragon's Claws, a Marvel UK team
• Dragon Lady Press, a comics publisher
• Dragon Lord (comics), a number of Marvel Comics characters
• Dragonmage, a DC Comics character
• Dragon Prince (comics)
• Black Dragon Society (comics)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (comics)
• Red Dragon (comics), a number of characters
• She-Dragon, an Image Comics character

Dragon refers to any of several remote sensing image processing software packages. This software provides capabilities for displaying, analyzing, and interpreting digital images from earth satellites and raster data files that represent spatially distributed data. All the Dragon packages derive from code created by Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Incorporated, and focus on geography education:

• OpenDragon is free to educational users. It was intended to be free worldwide, as well as open source (hence the name) but due to funding problems, is currently available only in Southeast Asia.
• Dragon Academic is functionally identical to OpenDragon.
• Dragon Professional is expanded to handle full-scene data sets from sensors such as Landsat TM, SPOT, and Aster.

Makara: (‘මකරා’) is a short story written in Sinhala by Sri Lankan writer Anandasiri Kalapugama. In 1975, this short story won the first prize of island-wide Novice Short Story Writing Competition conducted by Sri Lanka Board of Cultural Affairs under the Department of Cultural Affairs in the Government of Sri Lanka. It was published in 1975 special edition of “Art News” issued in line with 1975 Annual Literature Ceremony held in Galle and the winners were awarded by then President of Republic of Sri Lanka, Late Hon. William Gopallawa.

Dragon is a poem by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in the spring and summer of 1875 and first published in Vestnik Evropy October (#10) 1875 issue (pp. 581-605). The poem (consisting of 193 three-liners) was subtitled "A 12th century tale. From the Italian" and dedicated to Yakov Polonsky.

In July 1875 Tolstoy met Ivan Turgenev and Mikhail Stasyulevich in Karlsbad and read them the poem. According to the latter, all three discussed whether it was advisable to refer to as "translated from Italian" something that was in fact the original Russian text. "Let Angelo de Gubernatis scratch his head, digging in old archives, searching for the original", Tolstoy exclaimed, laughing. Still he made a compromise: in the "translated from Italian" phrase the first word was dropped.

The Dragon, as Tolstoy saw it, had one serious merit. "The best thing about this story is that it presents as rather plausible a kind of occurrence that would be quite impossible", he wrote in a letter to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein.