What does turtle mean in slang

Terrapins are also a kind of turtle. Terrapin used to refer broadly to "any of various aquatic turtles," but it now most often refers to the diamondback terrapin of the eastern salt marshes and coastal waters of North America. But yes, as we said above, the word turtle has its origins in hell. And this despite the fact that turtles seem rather sweetly shy and reclusive and are commonly featured on pajamas for the pre-verbal set.

The fact is, while they've got a largely unimpeachable reputation in today's world, 17th century sailors saw things differently. The English-speaking sailors who gave us our word turtle may have in fact been largely unaware of the implications, but they apparently modeled tortu , which became turtle , on the French word tortue , which itself was from the Late Latin tartarucha.

Tartarucha was short for the phrase bestia tartarucha or a similar collocation , which means "infernal beast" or "beast of the nether regions. It turns out that in early Christian literature and art the turtle was a symbol of heresy and evil. Because of its lowness to the ground and its tendency to wallow in mud and filth. We see evidence of this characterization of turtles in a mosaic of the late 3rd century C.

The mosaic depicts a turtle, partly withdrawn into its shell, aggressively confronted by a rooster, symbolic of goodness. The rooster and the turtle were ancient emblems of light and darkness, taken from the pre-Christian cult of Mithras , popular in the later days of the Roman empire. That classical Latin name lives on in an appropriate habitat—that of scientific classification: turtles are of the order Testudines , which descends from that word.

One viewer who caught the interview found the moment funny enough to upload on YouTube. Under the user name 3mediapro, this video was uploaded on June 10, —and it quickly gathered hundreds of thousands of views, inspired countless remixes and parodies, and even launched I like turtles -themed products like t-shirts. A combination of excitement about the turtles and nervousness about the interview led him to spout the famous phrase. The fascination with I like turtles persisted years after the meme first went viral.

I like turtles can also just be as a humorously random statement. This is not meant to be a formal definition of I like turtles like most terms we define on Dictionary. Feedback See Today's Synonym. Logged-in users can add themselves to the map. Login , Register , Login instantly with Facebook. Google has been penalizing this site in its search rankings for years and a Google employee lied about it.

Since they have almost killed this site, I am going to start releasing details on Monday August 17 of my conversation with the Google employee who told me about the penalty in secret. This will culminate in my release of an MBOX file including full headers. More here. MBOX file here. I am going to start releasing details on Monday August 17 of my conversation with the Google employee who told me about the penalty in secret. Details of my conversation with the Google employee who told me about the penalty in secret start Monday August Google has been lying about the penalty against this site for years.

My conversation with the Google employee who told me about the penalty starts dropping August I need to use the turtle.