Tyrannosaurus regina
Language: English
Part of speech: name
Forms: form: Tyrannosaurus Regina
form: tyrannosaurus regina
form: Tyrannosaura regina
form: Tyrannosaura Regina
Etymology: By replacing rex (Latin rēx (“king”)) of Tyrannosaurus rex with Latin rēgīna (“queen”).
Senses: examples: text: In olden days man fought Tyrannosaurus rex; nowadays he battles Tyrannosaurus regina—his wife.
ref: 1965 January 22, “Time Listings”, in Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine, volume 85, number 4, page 2:
text: A survey published last week found that only five per cent of the men in the entire labour force have wives who don’t work. After I’d read that, I stood in front of the mirror. And there she was, outlined in the twilight, a rare glimpse of a large mammalian female on the verge of extinction. Too big in the body, too little in the head, Tyrannosaurus Regina. We shall not see her ilk again.
ref: 1981 December 23, [Jill Tweedie], “All I ask, Mary, is when you visit, throw me a cream bun, OK: Letters from a fainthearted feminist”, in The Guardian, London; Manchester, page 8:
text: For 99.9% of the Cretaceous week, tyrannosaurus rex would kill anything that moved, eat anything that didn’t, break up the landscape, laugh at its own lousy jokes, belch, scratch, snore, pull the hairs out of its nostrils, and go to lodge meetings. In the five hebdomadal minutes remaining (usually on Saturday night), it would suddenly leap on tyrannosaurus regina with terrible ineptitude.
ref: 1982 July 21, Alan Coren, “A Short History”, in Punch, volume 283, number 7392, page 77:
text: […]was restored Tyrannosaurus regina.
ref: 1984, Country Life, page 1096:
text: Yet there we were, helplessly and snugly surrounded by Soup’s hoop, with an old rope snaking upward, ending in the clenched fists of the meanest kid in our solar system . . . Janice Riker, the inhuman replica of Tyrannosaurus Regina.
ref: 1990, Robert Newton Peck, Soup’s Hoop, Delacorte Press, →ISBN, page 6:
text: When we went to the movies, we saw one of two things: dinosaurs, or a film in which women dressed as men or men dressed as women. In short, it was the year of Tyrannosaurus Regina.
ref: 1993 December 26, Jay Stone, “1993: Everything that could go wrong …”, in The Ottawa Citizen, page F1:
text: A snaky neck coiled, and it was coming down at us, and it was all teeth. “Tyrannosaurus Regina,” Aaron whispered. “Cretaceous period. Meat-eater.”
ref: 1995, Richard Peck, Lost in Cyberspace, Puffin Books, published 1997, →ISBN, page 15:
text: Unfortunately, we used to have several candidates for that crown in the early days, and a few such dinosaurs survive. Romance Queens of the genus Tyrannosaurus Regina. But most romance writers are as everyday as Hamburger Helper: hard-working women—and a few brave men—who labor in obscurity to earn five figures, all of them with no more personal pizzazz or prima donna temperament than a sponge mop.
ref: 1996, Carole Nelson Douglas, Cat in a Diamond Dazzle: A Midnight Louie Mystery, New York, N.Y.: Forge, →ISBN, page 76:
text: WAS it Tyrannosaurus rex or Tyrannosaurus regina? Until now, telling the tyrant-lizard kings from their queens has been pure guesswork. But the discovery of an unusual type of bone in a T. rex femur[…]
ref: 2005, New Scientist, page 9:
text: Just short of the overturned vehicle, Tyrannosaurus rex stopped and sniffed the air, suspecting a trap—food was not supposed to give up quite so easily as this. Tyrannosaurus regina, however, was less fearful. She charged as the driver clambered up out of the capsized yellow hulk, slid to the ground, and fled across the field toward the crest of the knoll.
ref: 2006, Steven Utley, Howard Waldrop, “Crab”, in Deborah Layne, Jay Lake, editors, Polyphony, volume 6, Wheatland Press, →ISBN, page 134:
text: In her mind, she’s Tyrannosaurus regina crossed with a medieval witch.
ref: 2018, Ruth Hamilton, For the Love of Liverpool, Pan Books, published 2019, →ISBN:
glosses: The female of the species Tyrannosaurus rex.
examples: text: […]in adolescence the developing dinosaur is entrusted to Miss Tyrannosaurus Regina whose long life and virginity ensure her authority:[…]
ref: 1978, Evan Zimroth, Giselle Considers Her Future, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, →ISBN, page 45:
text: “As for the relationship between my mother-in-law and us. The gentlemen of the press have speculated that the Queen — or Tyrannosaurus Regina, as we affectionately call her sometimes . . .”
ref: 1985 November 7, Pete McMartin, “It’s tough being top people”, in The Sun, volume 99, number 306, Vancouver, B.C., page five:
text: Wake up from your history dream of echoing terror screams and share your song name with these lost children so I open my eyes to see Her glowing face and her sweet song rings my heart so alive I leap and twirl and somersault clapping my hands in drumming rhythm on tingling spine handsprings of hope to catch up with angels running swift in fluttering robes through tangled forests of grumbling oaks as we dodge dinosaur legs through endless halls of Jewel Cathedral where Tyrannosaurus Regina Demon Queen sits on Lotus Disk that twirls petal propellers to soar among stars over our small world.
ref: 2017, Simon Albert Craig Seamount, Gothiniad, →ISBN, page 267:
glosses: The female of the species Tyrannosaurus rex.
Used as a name.