鱷

Glyph origin
.

Etymology
Within Chinese, relates it to:
 * , either because drumming was associated with dragons or because some drums were made of crocodilian skins.
 * Words for “fear”, e.g.,.

Outside of Chinese, also relates it to:
 * 🇨🇬 (reconstruction from ), which, reconstructing the root as , holds to be a loan from Chinese.
 * Proto-, posited by and proposed by him to give rise to the Tai word, as well as 🇨🇬 ,.

notes that "aquatic reptile, saltwater crocodile" was attested late, for the first time in Shuowen as ; and that "it would be very weird if the word for a ‘saltwater crocodile’ from the middle of Huang-he (黃河) river basin that lies quite far away from both tropics and the sea would be borrowed by Tai languages in Southern China". Therefore, Vovin contends that, instead, had been borrowed into Later Han Chinese from.

Definitions

 * 1) crocodilian; crocodile; alligator