dragon

1. any of various very large lizards, esp the Komodo dragon

2. Christianity a manifestation of Satan or an attendant devil

3. a yacht of the International Dragon Class, 8.88m long (29.2 feet), used in racing

4. any of various North American aroid plants, esp the green dragon

5. chase the dragon Slang to smoke opium or heroin

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Dragon

(religion, spiritualism, and occult)

The Dragon is one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. It refers to one of the 12 earthly branches, which are used in Chinese astrology, together with the 10 heavenly stems. Such a branch designates one day every 12 days: the days are named according to a sexagesimal (60) cycle, made of 10 series of 12 branches.

A rather distinguished-looking person with an extroverted, brilliant nature, the Dragon is attached to his independence and is shamelessly lucky. Energetic and unpredictable, he likes flattery and may easily become despotic. Wildly enthusiastic, he launches his attack, but he may lose heart if the resistance is stronger than he expected. Generous and true, he totally lacks diplomacy. Perceptive, he often gives good advice. This passionate but perhaps fragile person often proves to be very sentimental—not to say naive—when in love.

—Michele Delemme

What does it mean when you dream about a dragon?

Dragons can have the same meaning as snakes and other serpents. Dragons symbolize very different things in the Western and Eastern traditions. In the West, heroic knights slay evil dragons that guard treasure or helpless damsels, which may symbolize the struggle between the noble and the ignoble elements of the self. In China, dragons are wise spiritual beings associated with the sky and air (Chinese dragons have wings), which indicates a very different set of connotations.

Dragon

[′drag·ən]

(astronomy)

Draco

dragon

archetypal symbol of Satan and wickedness. [Christian Symbolism: Appleton, 34]

See: Evil

DRAGON

(1)

An Esprit project aimed at providing effective support to reuse in real-time distributed Ada application programs.

DRAGON

(2)

An implementation language used by BTI Computer Systems.

E-mail: Pat Helland <helland@hal.com>.

dragon

(3)

[MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy or the Enterprise), which was generated by the "name dragon". Use is rare outside MIT, under Unix and most other operating systems this would be called a "background demon" or daemon. The best-known Unix example of a dragon is cron. At SAIL, they called this sort of thing a "phantom".

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

Dragon

(dreams)

This large, mystical creature may represent large and mystical forces inside of you. In the Far East it is believed that the dragons are spiritual creatures that navigate through the air and through the sky. In the West, dragons are considered to be dangerous creatures that need to be destroyed. As far as dream symbols go, the dragon may represent the enormous power in your unconscious. It could symbolize repressed unconscious material, including fear. However, the dragon in our dreams is generally a positive symbol. It may represent a period of time when the dreamer will confront his fears and empower himself to effectively cope with negative emotions, extreme materialism, and be able to obtain greater inner and outer freedom.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Dragon

a fabulous, winged (sometimes multiheaded), fire-breathing serpent in the mythology of many peoples. In China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Japan, the dragon was considered the deity of water, giving rise to fertility; later it became a symbol of power. In Egypt the dragon personified the powers of darkness, conquered by the sun god Re. In Christian legends, the dragon was the image of an evil spirit. The fabulous monsters of Russian folklore (Serpent Gorynych and others) bear a marked resemblance to dragons.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

How fortunate would it be for a great conqueror, if he could get a bushel of the dragon's teeth to sow!

It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their brothers with just as little reason as these children of the dragon's teeth.

And forthwith, feeling themselves bound to obey him, the five remaining sons of the dragon's teeth made him a military salute with their swords, returned them to the scabbards, and stood before Cadmus in a rank, eyeing him as soldiers eye their captain, while awaiting the word of command.

These five men had probably sprung from the biggest of the dragon's teeth, and were the boldest and strongest of the whole army.

But Cadmus was wiser than these earth-born creatures, with the dragon's fierceness in them, and knew better how to use their strength and hardihood.

It may not be too much to hope that the rest of mankind will by and by grow as wise and peaceable as these five earth-begrimed warriors, who sprang from the dragon's teeth.

It had grown up out of the earth in almost as short a time as it had taken the armed host to spring from the dragon's teeth; and what made the matter more strange, no seed of this stately edifice ever had been planted.

The five old soldiers of the dragon's teeth grew very fond of these small urchins, and were never weary of showing them how to shoulder sticks, flourish wooden swords, and march in military order, blowing a penny trumpet, or beating an abominable rub-a-dub upon a little drum.

But King Cadmus, lest there should be too much of the dragon's tooth in his children's disposition, used to find time from his kingly duties to teach them their A B C--which he invented for their benefit, and for which many little people, I am afraid, are not half so grateful to him as they ought to be.

View in context

If he was locked up like this, it must mean that that dragon story was fictitious, and that all danger was at an end of having to pit his inexperience against a ravening monster who had spent a lifetime devouring knights.

The ladies of the court ignored his existence, while, as for those wandering damsels who came periodically to Camelot to complain of the behaviour of dragons, giants, and the like, and to ask permission of the king to take a knight back with them to fight their cause (just as, nowadays, one goes out and calls a policeman), he simply had no chance.

View in context

Bakunawa (1:19.39), 2.Polillo Dragon Boat Team of Quezon Province (1:21.20) 3.

Bakunawa, SAG-1 rule Kadayawan dragon boatfest