That's not how words work. Dinosaur literally means terrible lizard, but they aren't lizards nor necessarily terrible.
> It’s not a common use of the word phone today
Lol so why use it in an article today?
BUT telephones really are about voice communications at a distance and not about the particular mechanics that were popularized with the public telephone network. Telephone "numbers", dialling, all that stuff was added later and isn't part of the telephone concept. So although the Latin etymology isn't why these were telephones, they were anyway.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dinosaur#Etymology
"Mighty reptiles"
But this article isn't about dinosaurs so it actually doesn't matter at all.
Describing the device in the article as a "wireless telephone" seems reasonable to me. It allowed voice communication at distance without wires.
Your question is answered by the rest of the sentence you didn't quote.
Describing the device as a "radio voice transceiver" might be more technically correct but I'm not sure how it makes the headline any better. Nobody uses that kind of language to describe a CB radio or cell phone, even though that's technically what they are.
The device fits within a reasonable interpretation of what we understand as a wireless telephone and how the device was used.
The headline could have been written "WWI pilots had CB radios" but then our pedantic argument here would be about what spectrum was used.
Em...no. it means "mighty" in the sense of "power beyond limits".
Em...yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#Etymology
> The term is derived from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinos), meaning 'terrible, potent or fearfully great', and σαῦρος (sauros), meaning 'lizard or reptile'
> New Latin dīnosaurus, from Ancient Greek δεινός (deinós, “terrible, awesome, mighty, fearfully great”) + σαῦρος (saûros, “lizard, reptile”). Coined by paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842.
So dinosaur can be reasonably interpreted to mean "mighty reptile".
In fact the next sentence from the wikipedia page you linked suggests that was the intended meaning:
> Though the taxonomic name has often been interpreted as a reference to dinosaurs' teeth, claws, and other fearsome characteristics, Owen intended it merely to evoke their size and majesty.
This is consistent with the meaning of deinos: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%BD%CF%8...
I don’t think you understand - they aren’t reptiles, mighty or otherwise. They’re lepidosaurs, but they aren’t reptiles.
"Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur
"The Lepidosauria (from Greek meaning scaled lizards) are reptiles with overlapping scales."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidosauria
In fact, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptile it doesn't look like dinosaurs are lepidosaurs at all.
Dinosaurs and lizards diverged at the lepidosaurs. A dinosaur is not a lizard. They share a common ancestor.