centaur

Syllables: cen·taur/ˈsɛn.tɔː/US/ˈsɛn.tɔɹ/

centaur noun: a mythical beast having a horse's body with a man's head and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.

Image: Clicgauche, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

centaur (plural centaurs)

(Greek) A mythical beast having a horse's body with a man's head and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.

Synonyms:

hippocentaur
(also, capitalized) One of a number of icy planetoids that orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
A chess-playing team comprising a human player and a computer who work together.
- This was not Kasparov's approach. Instead of rejecting the machines, he returned the year after his defeat to Deep Blue with a different kind of chess, which he called ‘Advanced Chess’. Other names for Advanced Chess include ‘cyborg’ and ‘centaur’ chess.2018, James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology, Knowledge and the End of the Future, Verso Books, →ISBN, page 159
(broadly, artificial intelligence) A human and an AI who work together.
- The first—termed “cyborgs” by the authors—intertwined with the AI, moulding, checking and refining its responses, while the second—“centaurs”—divided labour, handing off more AI-suited subtasks while focussing on their own areas of expertise.2023 November 11, John Burn-Murdoch, “Generative AI and white-collar jobs: reasons to be wary”, in FT Weekend (The FT View section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8
- Programming has not yet gone the way of chess. But the centaurs have arrived. GPT-4 on its own is, for the moment, a worse programmer than I am. Ben is much worse. But Ben plus GPT-4 is a dangerous thing.2023 November 13, James Somers, “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN

Proper noun capitalized: Centaur

the Centaur

The constellation and zodiacal sign Sagittarius.
- The Centaure, the horn'd goatfiſh Capricorne,
  The ſnake-heard [sic] Gorgon, and fierce Sagittar.1634, Thomas Carew, Cœlum Britanicum. A Masque at White-Hall in the Banquetting-House on Shrove-Tuesday-Night, the 18. of February 1633, London: John Walkley, page 9
- He picked up the ancient book of magic. ‘The Sign of the Centaur. Half man, half horse. Where shall I find it?’1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 115
Synonyms:

Archer

Noun (2) capitalized: Centaur

Centaur (plural Centaurs)

Alternative letter-case form of centaur.

centaur meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Tagalog and Arabic

centaur in Hindi

mythical half-man, half-horse: सेंटूर sẽṭūr

centaur in Marathi

mythical half-man, half-horse: सेंटॉर seṇṭŏr

centaur in Tagalog

mythical half-man, half-horse: sentawro

centaur in Arabic

mythical half-man, half-horse: قَنْطُور qanṭūr

More languagesFewer languages

centaur in Malay: sentora, sentaur
centaur in Vietnamese: nhân mã

Examples of centaur in a sentence

Labelled 'the most famous and wisest of all the centaurs' by one commentator, Chiron represented the acceptable face of centaurdom.
Centaurs, elves, humans, satyrs, halflings, mémechares and brounies surrounded them on all sides, except the one they had come from.
I suppose it isn't outside the realms of possibility that he'd just been off cottaging with some centaurs in the forest.

All 12 example sentences with centaur

Synonyms of centaur

Forms of centaur

plural	centaurs
alternative form	Centaur
plural	Centaurs

Plural of centaur: centaurs

Origin of centaur

From Latin centaurus, from Ancient Greek κένταυρος (kéntauros), from Κένταυρος (Kéntauros, “a member of a savage race from Thessaly”).

Words formed from centaur

Questions about centaur

What does centaur mean?: Centaur means a mythical beast having a horse's body with a man's head and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.
What is centaur in Hindi?: Centaur in Hindi is सेंटूर (sẽṭūr). See Centaur meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is centaur?: Centaur can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce centaur?: Centaur is pronounced /ˈsɛn.tɔː/ (UK).
What is the plural of centaur?: The plural of centaur is centaurs.

Words near centaur in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: centaur (page history and authors); Centaur (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-centaur.wav.

Cite this entry: “centaur.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/centaur. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.