wyvern

plural wyverns · alternative wivern · alternative wiver · alternative wyver

1. artsA draconian creature possessing wings, only two legs and usually a barbed tail.

   Above the shield was the well-known Midland crest of a legless wyvern (a wyvern normally has two legs).

   1956 July, Col. H. C. B. Rogers, “Railway Heraldry”, in Railway Magazine, page 479

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   [I]f (notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications interested his fancy and rewarded his attention.

   1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], “Castle-Building”, in Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 46

   Notions of freedom are tied up in drink / Our ideal life contains a tavern / Where man may sit and talk of or just think / All without fear of the nighted wyvern, / Or yet another tavern where it appears.

   1940-54 The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry, "WE SIT UNHACKLED DRUNK AND MAD TO EDIT", UBC Press,1992, p.222