python
/ˈpʌɪθ(ə)n
/- Family Pythonidae: genera Python (of Asia and Africa), and Morelia and Aspidites (of Australasia).
- Non-venomous snakes like boas and pythons grab their prey and squeeze them to death.
- I used to keep pythons and boa constrictors years ago.
- Code the python program to generate the server-side code.
- Write a python application that plays the Rock-Paper-Scissors game against the computer.
Derivatives
pythonic
- And they can come back to perform Wembley, when they finally build the new stadium - to which there are pythonic problems.
Origin
Late 16th century (in the Greek sense): via Latin from Greek Puthōn, the name of a huge serpent killed by Apollo. The main current sense dates from the mid 19th century.
A python's name comes from Greek Puthōn, the name of a huge serpent or monster killed by Apollo in Greek legend. Poets in the 17th and 18th centuries sometimes described any monster or plague as a python. Python was only used as a generic term for a snake that crushes its prey from the early 19th century. The BBC comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus was first shown on 5 October 1969. The name was deliberately chosen to have no real meaning—it was the winning candidate from a list of absurd titles such as Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus, Vaseline Review, and Owl-Stretching Time. After a slow start the programme became so popular and influential that in 1975 it gave the language a new word, Pythonesque, to describe surreal humour.