chameleon
/kəˈmiːlɪən
/(also chamaeleon)
noun
1A small slow-moving Old World lizard with a prehensile tail, long extensible tongue, protruding eyes that rotate independently, and a highly developed ability to change colour.
- Family Chamaeleonidae: four genera, in particular Chamaeleo, and numerous species, including the European chameleon (C. vulgaris).
- There are many other snakes of all different sizes, as well as chameleons, geckos, lizards, skinks, iguanas, spiders and huge tortoises.
- Raxworthy and colleagues developed a computer model to study chameleons, lizards known for their ability to change color depending on their mood or surroundings, in Madagascar.
1.1 (also American chameleon) North American An anole (tree-dwelling lizard).They have been replaced by the corresponding segments of the pigment of American chameleon....
- Among the saurian the iguanas can be pointed out, as well as the American chameleons and varanus.
- In the pure-cone American chameleon retina, all visual opsins including rod opsin are expressed.
1.2 figurative A person who changes their opinions or behaviour according to the situation: voters have misgivings about his performance as a political chameleon...
- The political chameleon changes its colors according to pressure, not conscience.
- To party cynics, she may be seen as a political chameleon, reinventing herself to charm the voters.
- He was a brilliant careerist and opportunist, a political chameleon whose life story seems more the stuff of fiction than of any kind of conventional history.
Derivatives
chameleonic
/ adjective ...- Such are the eyes and soul of Christopher Doyle: chameleonic, shifting, thick and excessive, like the multifarious textures of the infinite spectrum of images he composes.
- He's had a somewhat chameleonic career which has seen him as prog rock axe hero, fusioneer as well as a mainstream jazzer.
- Or maybe it was the fact that she projected an aura of chameleonic malleability, in his words you could ‘take her to the ballet or a biker bar, and she would fit in completely, perfectly in either environ.’
Origin
Middle English: via Latin chamaeleon from Greek khamaileōn, from khamai 'on the ground' + leōn 'lion'.
A lion and a giraffe feature in the history of the lizard's name. Chameleon is derived via Latin from Greek khamaileon, from khamai ‘on the ground’ and leōn ‘lion’. So a chameleon was a ‘ground lion’. It was often spelled camelion, which sometimes got mixed up with camelopard, an old word for a giraffe. So for a time, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a camelion was also a name for the giraffe. From the 16th century people have been described as chameleons if they were fickle or continually changing their opinions.