Meanings
- A fanciful notation, commonly attributed to historical maps, held to indicate either the belief that unknown dangers exist in a certain location on the map, or that actual dragons can be found there.
The awakening world scrawled ‘Here Be Dragons’ across the unknown territory.
2004, Nornie Campbell, No Dragons Here, page 2532 more examples
It's like in those old maps of the world, where the mapmakers wrote, "Here be dragons" on the unexplored parts of the globe.
1994, Steven Henry Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering, page 11When the old seafarers encountered uncharted territory, they would find those blank areas on the map marked with the phrase “Here be Dragons” and the image of a sea serpent or a similarly ferocious creature.
2011, Susie Vrobel, Fractal Time: Why a Watched Kettle Never Boils, page 255Synonyms: here be monsters, there be dragons
- By extension, used to indicate that which is unknown or uncertain, particularly if it seems to carry some type of risk.
Speaking of money... here be dragons... Do you charge?
1993, Incorporated Association of Organists, Organists' Review, Volume 79, Issues 309-312, p. 2194 more examples
Here be dragons in the shape of London landladies, owners of small hotels ('B. & B.') in the streets off the lower end of Euston Road. . .
1962, Geoffrey Fletcher, The London Nobody Knows, page 16. . . let me go into what was the unknown, ‘Here-be-Dragons’, hinterland of science, to find out what made scientists tick. . .
1987, Ritchie Calder, reported in New Scientist, Vol. 114, No. 1559, May 7, 1987, p. 61Analytical philosophers mark "Here be dragons" on the part of the intellectual map that belongs to phenomenology.
1997, William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought, page 191In undertaking such a task, I realise that I am venturing into uncharted waters, or at least waters for which only charts of the ‘here be dragons’ variety exist.
1997, Charles Jones, The Edinburgh history of the Scots language, page 336
Synonyms & antonyms
phraseA fanciful notation, commonly attributed to historical maps, held to indicate either the belief that unknown dangers exist in a certain location on the map, or that actual dragons can be found there.
Origin
- LatinHC SVNT DRACONES“here are dragons”
- Englishhere be dragons
Evidence of the use of this term as a notation on actual historical maps is lacking. The only known appearance of an equivalent phrase in any language on a historical map is of Latin HC SVNT DRACONES (“here are dragons”), placed on the east coast of Asia, on the Hunt-Lenox Globe, which dates from c. 1510. The phrase is simply a variation on HIC SVNT LEONES ("here are lions"), the classical phrase used by medieval cartographers to denote unknown territories on maps.
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 此處有龍 /此处有龙
- 此處有龍 /此处有龙 (cǐchùyǒulóng)map notation indicating unknown dangers
Latin hic sunt dracones
- hic sunt draconesmap notation indicating unknown dangers
Cite this entry
here be dragons. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/here%20be%20dragons
“here be dragons.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/here%20be%20dragons. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “here be dragons,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/here%20be%20dragons.
Source: here be dragons on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.