The Saxon word wivere means serpent. It gave modern English the word wyvern. The word dragon, on the other hand, comes from Latin by way of Old French. The Romans borrowed a Greek word to describe the creature, using a form of a verb that meant “to see clearly” or perhaps by implication “to kill at a glance.”

Clearly, these names have different linguistic histories, yet the creatures they describe are plainly relatives. Both are winged, reptilian (in the sense of lizard-like or serpentine), dangerous and rare. They provide quests for saints and heroes, and stories for sleepy children. Yet there are differences.

Physical characteristics of mythical creatures

Importantly, wyverns have only two legs, while dragons usually have four. Both dragons and wyverns have wings, although in China a dragon must live thousands of years before it acquires them. (Incidentally, a dragon-like creature without legs is an amphiptere, while a beast that looks like a dragon but lacks wings is a lindworm.)

Wyverns often have venomous breath that stuns or kills. Dragons, on the other hand, breathe fire. The white dragon, a specialized species of northern regions, actually breathes killing frost, cold fire.

Dragon’s blood is a poison. Yet it enables heroes to understand animal speech, or renders their armor impenetrable. Powdered dragon bones cure madness and other maladies. Dismembered wyverns do not work such magicks, which may have improved their chances of survival down the centuries.

In mythology, dragons are utterly reptilian. They are often covered in shining scales, and sometimes ridged like armored lizards. Their wings are also scaled, and often also armored. Their feet are those of reptiles, whether they have three, four or five toes.

Wyverns’ reptilian forms are overlaid with characteristics of the birds of prey. The wyverns of heraldry pose as a bird would stand. Their wings are armed with the claws of raptors, the better to seize their hapless captives. They stand on talons, rather than upon a lizard’s toes. Certain wyverns have sharp tearing beaks.

Wyverns are smaller, generally. They look lighter and more fragile than most dragons. However, wyverns may carry a venomous sting in their arrow-shaped tail.

The habitat of wyvern and dragon

The habitat of both species is commonly wild wastes where humans seldom venture, though either may take up residence near a town to gather tribute in treasure or in lives. A dragon conceals its noisome den, often underground. There it sprawls upon a glittering hoard. The dragon often chooses a cavern in the high dry mountains for its lair.

Wyverns make their lairs in lakes or pools, or in swampy places seldom traveled by the wise. They too guard a treasure, though primitive myths say it may be mixed with rubble of no value, the gold and the garbage tumbled together.

Character of the serpentines

Morally, dragons can be good or bad, though in either case they are indifferent to human values. In ancient Bulgaria, male dragons were associated with fire and accounted allies of humanity, while female dragons were associated with water and numbered among the enemies of man. Dragons are everywhere creatures of avarice, piling up their hoard through the centuries, and guarding it with fire.

Wyverns can be aggressive without warning or comprehensible reason. Yet though they are rash, they never bear the simmering malice dragons can harbor for generations. Who knows if wyverns react without thought, and then suffer centuries of regret? They are plainly creatures of reflection, curating hoards composed of varied items that spark their interest, rather than clanking stores of gaudy wealth.

Many dragons are brilliant, though. The species is noted for wisdom, if sometimes for its treachery. Most can talk, if they will, and many are capable of persuasive, even fascinating, speech. Ancient legends claim that dragons taught humanity language.

The wyverns of legend are unwilling to speak, and their conversation is terse and condescending. They are less noted, and thus perhaps less pursued. Most wyverns are silent, except for the deadly hiss they share with dragons.

Some learned natural philosophers describe dragons as analogous to humans among their kind, while wyverns, amphipteres, and lindworms resemble lower primates. The partisans of wyverns do not agree. For all that humans know, the wyverns, with their relatively compact and efficient form, may be the well-adapted descendants of dragon-kind.

As birds evolved from scaly dinosaurs, perhaps the airy wyverns evolved from dragons. It may be they have long been wise and magical enough to keep hidden, however powerful the saints and scientists we send against them, leading humans to let them be. Or it may be that wyverns consider themselves too highborn to show themselves among their inferiors, or to humble themselves by holding speech with lowly humankind.