What does the word “raptor” primarily mean to you? Just curious, and thought that an informal poll of the SDMB, famed for fighting ignorance, might be interesting.
That’s what I thing of when I hear the word raptor.
When I see the word “raptor,” my first thought is bird of prey: an eagle, hawk, falcon, or owl. My second thought is to remove owl from that list. My third is to remind myself that falcons are a variety of hawk, and my fourth thought of course is of Jurassic Park.
Me, too.
But I’m wondering about to what degree this point of view is diminishing in favor of the second or third option above.
Being in about 5th Grade when the movie Jurassic Park came out, I think that that is first time had heard the term Raptor, so naturally that’s what comes to mind.
There’s a Raptor Roller Coaster at Cedar Point.
First, and primarily: bird of prey
Second: short name for velociraptor
Third: F-22
I’m not sure if the question you want answered is really “What does the word ‘raptor’ mean to you?” or “What it the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘raptor’”?
The word means a variety of things to me, the meaning of which is generally made clear by the context in which it is used. In the case of this thread, I had just very recently been reading the “WOW General Discussion” thread in The Game Room, so the first thing that came to mind was actually the World of Warcraft creature.
If someone just randomly walked up to me on the street and said “raptor”, it would probably depend on my state of mind at the time, what type of conversation I might have recently been having, the nature of person speaking to me (a young kid in a D&D t-shirt would make me think ‘dinosaur’, while Sir Richard Attenborough would likely make me think ‘bird of prey’), or any of a number of other factors.
On a side note, apparently the spell-check in Google Chrome does not recognize the word ‘raptor’.
Well I said bird of prey, because, you know, that’s what it means. But are the other options really wrong? All of those other things are called raptors too.
I must admit at the mention of Raptors my mind always goes to this comic
I voted for “dinosaur-like monster,” simply because that’s the context in which I most often hear it. Raptor for “bird of prey” was a close second, but it feels kind of like an archaic usage to me. I’m not saying it is archaic, it’s just that when I see it used in that sense, there’s usually a guy nearby whose wardrobe has more rivets than buttons.
It’s a person who sneaks up behind me and raps me on the head with a blunt instrument.
I always think of the dinosaur first, so sometimes if I hear something like “We saw a raptor during our trip to California” my first thought is “OMG REALLY?” like I maybe I missed some big announcement in Scientific American, but I pretty quickly remember it means bird of prey.
You might notice the poll in question says, “What does the word ‘raptor’ primarily mean to you?” As does my OP. (I would have similarly edited the thread title, but too late, no can do.)
Yes, but words can have more than one significant meaning to you. For example: if someone says something is “hot” you might be equally as likely to think of temperature or sexual attractiveness.
I think of dinosaurs and eagles/hawks, in no particular order.
For me, it’s dinosaurs, then Jurassic Park, then the Toronto NBA team, then the bird of prey, then the plane ( if at all)…
You may want to look up the definition of “primary.”
I know what primary means, which is why I used the word significant - to indicate that some words do not have a primary meaning to people.
Whatever.
If you really can’t choose just one option, you can pick “something else” and explain why two notions of what a word means are precisely equal.
My first thought was 10,000RPM hard drive. Western digitals “Raptor” line of hard drives.
Eminem, rapper turned actor.
Or velociraptor. In Jurassic Park the raptor weren’t dinosaur-like creatures, they were raptors - why’s that listed separately?