Dragons, almost everybody have heard about this mythical creatures. Draons is an imaginary creature that made by people and almost everywhere, interconnected with reptiles, be it a snake or a lizard. They come from around the worlds.
In Greece the word drakōn, from which the English word was derived, was used originally for any large serpent and the dragon of mythology, whatever shape it later assumed, remained essentially a snake.
‘Dragon’ has been etymologically traced to 13th century French, which has its roots in Latin ‘Draconem’ ("huge serpent, dragon"), which has its roots in ‘Drakon’ ("serpent, giant seafish"). The way the Greeks and Romans used the word could also refer to real snakes of a large size, in addition to mythological monsters.
A dragon is a large, serpent-like legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures around the world. Beliefs about dragons vary drastically by region. Divided from their origins, dragon seperated by 2 part of the world :
Western Dragons
dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as winged, horned, four-legged, and capable of breathing fire.
Eastern Dragon
Dragons in eastern cultures are usually depicted as wingless, four-legged, serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence. In general, in the Middle Eastern world, where snakes are large and deadly, the serpent or dragon was symbolic of the principle of evil. Greeks and Romans, though accepting the Middle Eastern idea of the serpent as an evil power, also at times conceived the drakontes as beneficent powers.
In the Far East, the dragon managed to retain its prestige and is known as a beneficent creature. The Chinese dragon, lung, represented yang, the principle of heaven, activity, and maleness in the yin-yang of Chinese cosmology.
And by teir shapes, dragon that I know is Seperated again by 3 beings, Drake, Wyvern, and Wyrm.
Dragons
‘Dragon’ in pop culture often refers to a whole category of monsters that tend to be covered in scales with a long thick tail, often bat-winged with four or six limbs. Multiple heads are also possible. Their intelligence varies from animalistic to smarter than humans, the smarter ones tend to be able to use the same magic (or even stronger kinds) than humans. Fire or poisonous breath is common though you can also find more exotic takes like lightning or ‘fear’.
In settings where ‘Dragon’, ‘Wyvern’, ‘Drake’ refer to different species, dragons tend to have six limbs, two being wings.
Wyverns
In modern fiction a wyvern usually refers to a big scaly monster with four limbs, two being wings used for flight and are usually animalistic in intelligence. A poisonous stinger on the tail is common, and though Dungeons & Dragons didn’t give them fiery breath weapons some newer games like Monster Hunter have.
Wyverns are usually depicted walking around on two legs with their wings tucked in like a bird, but some also walk about on four limbs similar to bats.
The usual spelling wyvern is not attested before the seventeenth century as "winged two-footed dragon". It is an alteration of Middle English (attested thirteenth century) wyver, from Old French wivre (cf. French guivre and vouivre), itself from Latin vīpera, meaning 'viper', 'adder', 'asp'.
The design of the wyvern to have derived from the figure of the dragon encountered by Trajan's legions in Dacia. It may be the origin of the red dragon of Wales and the golden dragon of the Kingdom of Wessex carried at the Battle of Burfordin AD 752.
-Wyvern - Wikipedia
Drakes
There’s less of a consensus in modern fiction as to what ‘Drake’ should refer to, one precedent set by Dungeons & Dragons is for the term to refer to a draconic creature that has four limbs, none of them wings, and an animalistic intelligence. 20th century drakes in fiction tend to walk on four limbs like a wolf, while in the 21st century I’ve seen more drakes walking around on two legs like a theropod dinosaur.
Sometimes monsters called drakes are basically the same as what I described wyverns to be, sometimes with six limbs like in Magic: The Gathering, distinguished from dragons in that setting by being only as intelligent as animals.
Etymologically ‘Drake’ comes from Old English and has roots in the Latin Draco.
Wyrm
Beings that bear the identification of ‘wyrm’ in modern fiction tend to be the most ancient and powerful dragons in the setting, highly intelligent and wielding powerful magic. Usually six limbed with two wings.
Etymologically ‘wyrm’ has its roots in Old German ‘worm’ which has its roots in Norse ‘ormr’, meaning a snake or mythological serpent. Norse depictions of ormr are very serpentine and don’t have wings, so closer to an East Asian dragon in that regard.
As the Norse had a good amount of contact with steppe nomads who also had contact with Chinese empires it’s interesting to note that an ancient Chinese word for ‘venomous critter (such as snakes and centipedes)’, ‘虫’ also refers to worms.
The term dragon has no zoological meaning, but it has been applied in the Latin generic name Draco to a number of species of small lizards found in the Indo-Malayan region. The name is also popularly applied to the giant monitor, Varanus komodoensis, discovered on Komodo, in Indonesia.
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