Also 7 centapee, 8 centapie, centipes, 8–9 centipee, 9 (in Dicts.) centiped. [ad. L. centipeda centipede, f. centum + pes (ped-) foot. The actual form is perhaps a. F. centipède; centipie, centapee, in W.Indies and early navigators was prob. from Sp.]
A name given to wingless vermiform articulated animals having many feet, constituting the order Cheilopoda of the class Myriapoda. Those of tropical countries are very venomous.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 381. There be Latine writers who call this worme Centipeda, as if it had an hundred feet.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 141. Some … with many legs, even to the number of an hundred, as Juli Scolopendræ, or such as are termed centipedes.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1729), I. 320–1. Centapees, call’d by the English 40 Legs…. Their Sting or Bite is more raging than the Scorpion.
1727. A. Hamilton, New Acc. E. Ind., II. xxxix. 89. [He] was bit in the Calf of the Leg by a Centipee.
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 426. The Centapie is reckoned very venomous.
1794–6. E. Darwin, Zoon. (1801), I. 261. I once saw a worm…, and observed a centipes hanging at its tail.
1799. G. Hamilton, in Asiatic Res., II. 339. Stung by a scorpion, or centipee.
1835. Kirby, Hab. & Inst. Anim., II. xvi. 67. A specimen of the giant centipede … more than a foot long.
1847. Carpenter, Zool., § 823. The Centipede and other carnivorous Myriapods, possessing strong and active limbs, varying in number from fifteen to twenty-one pairs.
attrib. 1875. trans. Ziemssen’s Cycl. Med., III. 539. In the case of Centipede bites.
b. transf. and fig.
1866. Thoreau, Yankee in Canada, i. 16. They made on me the impression, not of many individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man.
1867. F. Francis, Angling, vii. (1880), 262. The line will make ‘centipedes’ on the water.
