Each country, each nation, each tribe, each city and each person has its own associations and beliefs associated with monsters. Hearing the word "monster", each person in his mind immediately imagined something terrible, ugly, frightening. Did this word have a different, original meaning?
Etymology of the word "monster"
The word "monster" is a translation from English (monstre).
Scientists believe that the word meaning "monster" in most European languages comes from Latin (monstrium). It was a term that called plants and animals with birth defects.
In ancient times, such deformities, as people called them, were seen as an omen of something bad. The study of such deviations in plants and animals was carried out by a special section of medicine called teratology.
The ancient Greeks were the first to believe that a monster is nothing more than instinctive fears. They often portrayed monsters as humans.
Many ancient writers created entire collections of short stories, poems, telling about monsters.
Meaning of the word “monster”
So, initially only plants and animals were called monsters, in which defects were found at birth.
Later, the meaning of the monster expanded to various mythical creatures: chimeras, centaurs, mermaids and others.
Most dictionaries give several interpretations of this word. One interpretation describes the monster as a creature with birth defects, a holy fool.
Another definition is used in a figurative sense and refers to a person who differs from others in his terrible qualities of character.
There is a third, different from previous definitions, the definition according to which a monster can be called someone or something extremely significant, outstanding.
Synonyms for the word "monster"
Currently, monsters are by no means less interesting in humans. The pages of fantastic literature, fairy tales, and comics are full of various kinds of fictions about mythical monsters that live on a planet inhabited by people.
In some stories, they appear to us in the images of a scarecrow, a monster, a geek, a golem. In others, monsters are various monsters, freaks, scares, monsters.
Some scientists believed that a monster is a generalizing term for values close to it. However, others disproved such judgments, taking into account the fact that any of the above synonyms could easily replace the word “monster”.