A Friend in West Virginia, Part Twenty

My West Virginia friend had an influence on me. His love of rock group, KISS, had me buy a KISS shirt. A favorite rock group of mine is Def Leppard, but my friend doesn't like them, so I teased him a bit about Def Leppard (not spelled "leopard," see Word History," below). He's terribly concerned with his image, which underlies some, or maybe, most, of his fears.  

WORD HISTORY:
Leopard-This word, actually a compound, is related to "lion," which seems to have been borrowed as, "leon," by Old Greek from some language of the Middle East or North Africa. Egyptian is a candidate, as the Greeks and the Egyptians had much contact. Anyway, Ancient Greek had transliterated "leon," which was borrowed by Latin as "leo," but which had forms with "n" ("leoni, leone," for example), depending upon usage in a sentence. The second half of the word, "pard," has an uncertain origin, but seemingly was borrowed by Old Greek from some language as transliterated, "párdalis," which "seems" to have meant, "panther," and which then became, "pardos," which was borrowed by Latin as "pardus." Greek formed the transliterated compound, "leópardos," which was then borrowed by Latin as "leopardus." The overall idea was, the ancient Greeks/Roman felt a "leopard" was a mixture of the lion and panther; thus, the compound word. Old French, a Latin-based language, had the word from Latin as, "leupart" (then "lebard/lepard?"). English borrowed the word in the 1200s as, "leopard," but with some other variant spellings.