Word.ws English Dictionary

chamaeleon

chamaeleon is the archaic spelling of chameleon.

Meaning of chameleon

Noun

chameleon (plural chameleons)

  1. A small to mid-size reptile, of the family Chamaeleonidae, and one of the best known lizard families able to change color and project its long tongue.
    • Milk of chameleon was recommended as an erotic stimulant by Avicenna.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 59
  2. (figuratively) A person with inconstant behavior; one able to quickly adjust to new circumstances.
    • He is a political chameleon, as charming to business leaders he met privately in Aberdeen on Friday night as he has been inspiring to distressed and desperate Labour defectors in Glasgow and beyond.2014 September 8, Michael White, “Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe”, in The Guardian
    Synonyms:
    Zelig
  3. A hypothetical scalar particle with a non-linear self-interaction, giving it an effective mass that depends on its environment: the presence of other fields.

See all 4 meanings of chameleon

Proper noun capitalized: Chamaeleon

Chamaeleon

  1. A small circumpolar constellation of the southern sky, imagined to resemble a chameleon, which lies south of the constellations Carina and Musca.
    • The X-ray luminosity function has been determined so far only for the far only for the central parts of the Chamaeleon SFR by Fiegelson et al. (1993).1994, Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica, Volumes 28-30, Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, page 50
    • 2001, A. Mizuno, T. Hayakawa, T. Onishi, Y. Fukui, Dense Core Survey toward the Chamaeleon Dark Cloud Complex with the NANTEN Radio Telescope, Alwyn Wootten (editor), Science with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA): Proceedings of a Conference, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, page 146.

Forms of chamaeleon

pluralchamaeleons

Origin of chamaeleon

Learned borrowing from Latin chamaeleon (“chamaeleon”), from Ancient Greek χαμαιλέων (khamailéōn). Doublet of chameleon. Named by Dutch explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman between 1595 and 1597.

Words formed from chamaeleon

  • Chamaeleon complex
  • Chamaeleon I
  • Chamaeleon II
  • Chamaeleon III

Questions about chamaeleon

What does chamaeleon mean?
Chamaeleon means a small circumpolar constellation of the southern sky, imagined to resemble a chameleon, which lies south of the constellations Carina and Musca.
What is chamaeleon the archaic spelling of?
Chamaeleon is the archaic spelling of chameleon.
What part of speech is chamaeleon?
Chamaeleon is a proper noun.

Words near chamaeleon in the dictionary

  1. Chamacoco
  2. Chamacocos
  3. chamade
  4. chamades
  5. chamaedoroid
  6. chamaeleon
  7. chamaeleonid
  8. chamaeleonids
  9. chamaeleons
  10. chamaeleontid
  11. chamaeleontids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chamaeleon (page history and authors); Chamaeleon (page history and authors); chameleon (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:

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