any of a large group of chiefly tropical New World lizards of the family Teiidae, as the racerunner, caiman lizard, or whiptail, characterized by large rectangular scales on the belly and a long tail
adjective
2.
belonging or pertaining to the Teiidae
Word origin
[1955–60; ‹ NL Teiidae, equiv. to Tei(us) genus name (‹ Pg tejú lizard of the genus Tupinambis ‹ Tupi tejú, teyú) + -idae-id2]This word is first recorded in the period 1955–60. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: cassette, geodesic dome, new wave, rite of passage, software-id is a suffix occurring in English derivatives of modern Latin taxonomic names, esp.zoological families and classes; such derivatives are usually nouns denoting a singlemember of the taxon or adjectives with the sense “pertaining to” the taxon. Otherwords that use the affix -id include: arachnid, canid