thagomizer (English)
Where does "thagomizer" come from?
The English noun 'thagomizer', meaning an arrangement of spikes found on the tails of various stegosaurs, is a modern coinage created in 1982 by cartoonist Gary Larson[1]. The term was introduced in a comic strip featuring a caveman lecturing about dinosaurs, who named the tail spikes after the late character 'Thag Simmons'[1].
Sources
Updated August 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris