Deinonychus

//daɪˈnɒnɪkəs// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A medium agile dinosaur, of the genus Deinonychus, of the Cretaceous period, characterized by having a large, curved claw on each hind foot.

    "The first attempts were made on the remains of duckbill dinosaurs found in the Coleville River dig, but the real success was made when the University located the remains of three deinonychi at an Amoco drill site on the Alaskan North Slope."

  2. 2
    swift agile wolf-sized bipedal dinosaur having a large curved claw on each hind foot; of the Cretaceous wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
velociraptor

Example

More examples

"The first attempts were made on the remains of duckbill dinosaurs found in the Coleville River dig, but the real success was made when the University located the remains of three deinonychi at an Amoco drill site on the Alaskan North Slope."

Etymology

From translingual Deinonychus (1969), from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinós, “fearful, terrible”) (see dinosaur) + ὄνυξ (ónux, “nail, claw, talon”).

More for "deinonychus"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.