What's the difference between a dragon and a drake?

What's the difference between a dragon and a drake?

Please respond.

In what context?

In folklore/mytholoy and linguistics, there is no difference. Both are English borrowings via Old French from the Latin "draco", itself a borrowing from Greek "δράkων" (drakon). (The word is ultimately of Greek origin, the original Draco was a unique monster from Greek myth, hence the northern constellation.)

Depends on if you ask a dragon or a drake.

One is spelt with 6 letters and the other with 5

According to Fantasy Craft, a Drake is a possible Player Character. Usually about Bear, and even larger depending on choices, sized. Think of the Dragon types from Pokémon.

A Dragon is big and dangerous.

Depends on the setting

drakes are male ducks, dragons are monitor lizards

Drakes have wings and 2 legs like a bird, while dragons have 4 limbs + wings and are generally larger.

It's like squares and rectangles. All drakes are dragons, not all dragons are drakes. In particular, smaller species of dragons are often called drakes.
Drakes are also what they call male ducks. No relation, hopefully.

Whatever they identify as you shitlord, you don't get to chose for them

Traditional DnD dragons are sentient, intelligent magical creatures

Dark Sun had drakes, which are like cousins to dragons minus the intelligence/sentience and are as such more bestial and instinctual

These are my kind of drake.

...

...

Whereas in Basic D&D, drakes are smaller and weaker than dragons but naturally able to shapeshift into a human or demihuman form.

In some settings, a drake would be an adolescent dragon that has not yet grown wings but is rapidly increasing in size and strength.

No wings- Drake
Wings, two legs- Wyvern
Wings, four legs- Dragon

Not exact by any means because fantasy.

One's a giant winged lizard that breathes fire, the other's a Canadian Rapper.

In Warcraft, drakes are juvenile dragons but in generic D&D land they seem to be to dragons what chimpanzees are to us - less intelligent animal cousins.

My setting follows this pattern, with dragons being extremely rare (only two left) and drakes being relatively mundane animals that take advantage of the draconic "cool factor".

This. Also as a side note all of my internets go to whoever posts art of wingless drakes styled after dnd dragons like pic related.

Dragons are mythical flying reptiles that sometimes breathe poison and sometimes breathe fire. Sometimes they are intelligent, sometimes they are beasts. I've seen them have anywhere from 0-4 legs and wings or no wings.

Drake is a Canadian that drops phat beats.

You're thinking of wyrms. Wyrms have 4 limbs including wings, Dragons have 6 including wings. A drake is usually just a young or small dragon, or a flightless 4 limbed lizard, from the interpretations I've seen.

Ya'll are also forgetting about amphiptere (snake like with wings but no legs), guivre (serpentine limbless dragons like most of mtg's wurms) and lindworm/linnorm (serpentine but with one pair of limbs, used as either arms or legs).
Dragons are more diverse than just Wyvern/Drake/Dragon.

>What's the difference between a dragon and a drake?

>Dragon
Intelligence: 'CAN' very rarely be as intelligent as a person, but usually just a smart animal.
Physical: 2 wings, 4 legs.
Breath: Usually Fire, but lightning, poison, frost, ice, boiling water, aren't unheard of.

>Drake
Intelligence: Never person smart, but always quite smart for an animal.
Physical: 0 wings, 4 legs. Drakes are specifically defined by their terrestrial behavior.
Breath: Usually none, but some species do have elemental breath- always er on the side of caution.

>Drake definition
Damn! That is harsh to Canadians.

One breathes fire, the other loves orange soda.

The typical connotation is that a "drake" is a lesser dragon of some kind.

What that entails exactly depends on the particular setting/work. Some have drakes as essentially the same general kind of thing as dragons (ie, big, smart, flying, fire-breathing reptiles), but just...diminished. Smaller, weaker (both physically and magically), not as bright. But there are some that use "drake" to refer specifically to wingless quadruped dragons (which may or may not also be inferior to "proper" dragons in terms of size, strength, intelligence, etc.).

TL;DR, they're denotatively just two different words for the same thing, but "drake" generally connotes something that is in some way lacking or inferior compared to "dragon".

At that point why not just call them dinosaurs?

Whatever the guy who always shouts ACKSHUALLY says it is.

Depends on setting

Dragons are mythical firebreathing lizards and drakes are good with plum sauce.

It's an autism episode

A dragon is a large, predatory reptillian with 2-6 limbs, a serpent-like neck, head and tail, and potentially a breath weapon.

A drake is a male duck.

Speech.

What's a wyrm then? Wings, no legs?

one hoards gold, the other is $6 million in debt

One's a giant immortal stone-scaled creature that's existed since before the dawn of time or the very concept of "life"

The other's a giant horrifying reptilian monster that breathes fire so hot that the blood will boil in your veins, with claws sharp enough to tear clean through mail.

One is what autists call a dragon and the other is the word "dragon"

One is a dragon, the other is this guy

...

the ending -on of the word dragon in other languages can be used to note a larger version of the word's root itself, so a dracon can refer to a larger version of a draco, but this can be a denomination intended for size and age as for the species themselves, we only know that not all beings called dragons are bigger than the beings called drakes so the distinction is not formally definitive and the terms interchangeable.

I've always had my wyrms similar to, well, worms.
No legs and no wings. Basically just dragon snakes.

Dinosaurs have feathers.

Dragon's are typically huge reptiles and Drake's are smaller similar

All boards are one in the Iris.


Anyone here familiar with Chinese mythology? There's probably another distinction in there.

Depends on the setting.

In many settings drakes are often smaller, punier and more 'mundane' and feral version of dragons. Generally they have animal-like intelligence, lack magic/supernatural abilities save for their breath weapons, and don't share a dragon's exceptional lifespan. You often see them as tetrapod (which means four limbs, so two legs and two wings, while often dragons are represented as hexapods, with four limbs and two wings) and in size varying from large bird to large pterosaur, often big enough to be ridden. In this they quite overlap with the general fantasy interpretation of wyverns as well.

Myth and folklore wise there is no difference.

The term dragon alone covers everything from the Welsh red (4 limb, 2 wing that we usually think of as "true" dragons) to the giant monitor lizard looking St. George's dragon, giant snakes with poisonous breath that wrapped around hills multiple times to the giant turtle Tarrasque.

DnD was where we get such arbitrary differentiation to fill monster manuals.

In my D&D setting, a drake is its own unique creature, which is essentially a lesser dragon that cannot fly but can shapeshift naturally.

In a book I'm writing where a dragon is one of the two main characters, a drake just refers to a dragon between the ages of 15 and 25, which roughly corresponds with adolescence.

Dragons don't have a music career.

I divide them into "False dragons" and "True dragons"

False dragons: Look like you would expect of a dragon but really aren't. It is a broad category meant to identify a group of otherwise unrelated creatures that share some characteristics
>Drake(False): Giant lizard with the body shape of a boar and a short tail. Bite might be somewhat toxic but that's it
>Wyvern: Halfway between an eagle and a Utahraptor. Horse-sized. Feathered. Has a stinger tail to kill bigger game before it swoops down for the kill
>Basilisk(Lesser): Very similar to a drake but with 6 to 8 legs. Around the same size too
>Basilisk(Greater): A bigger version of the lesser one, has 30 pairs of legs. The size of two train wagons. Looks like a mix between a lizard and a centipede. Incredibly smart, good weaponsmiths and spellcasters.
>Long: A spiritual manifestation of a river or mountain.

True dragons: Reptillian creatures with 6 limbs (Sometimes vestigial) that can vary in shape but always follow this cycle. Can breathe fire or poison.
>Drake(True): What the whelp of a dragon is called until it learns to use their second pair of limbs (Whether is be wings or arms)
>Dragon: Adult dragon. Many varieties. They range from 4 limbs + arms/wings to 2 limbs + wings in any configuration. Wyvern-like ones are more reptilian, have no feathers, and no stinger tail. Slightly bigger than a draft horse. They mate in this stage but won't be able to lay eggs until they become Wyrms around 200 years later
>"Sea" dragon: Looks like the mixture between an adult dragon and a lamprey. Massive size. They are the next maturity stage for dragons. Their limbs shorten but are still functional
>Wyrm: The venerable old. They look like a giant worms with tunneler mouths. Their limbs are completely vestigial now. Revered by their younger counterparts and generally non malicious, will impart their wisdom if you can appease them. Spend most of their time lying the eggs they carry since they were in the Dragon stage

Because those aren't dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are real animals.