One of Indiana's prettiest and more popular landscape ornaments has a darker side: winged burning bush (Euonymus alata), a shrub that turns fiery red in the autumn, has spread from people's yards and ... Concord Monitor: Take Me Outside: A flame of color from the burning bush 7 Okay.. here is the problem: In a certain story I am writing, I have a place called the "Winged Lion Inn" which serves as a locus for several story-related events.

Understanding the Context

I have a friend that insists it should be [pronounced] the "Wingèd Lion Inn" instead, using "learnèd" or "three-leggèd" as examples. But winged is under pressure from many other words (clung, flung, rung, stung, etc.), so I expect wung has occured repeatedly in the past - facetiously and or through genuine ignorance. Winged words played an important role in the elaboration of some theories about oral traditions. Some translators have translated the phrase literally, others have reflected a perceived emotion, yet others ignored these words.

Key Insights

Similar to talented are gifted, or winged as in a bird is a winged creature. Nouns can be turned into adjectives by adding "-ed", but it seems they need a modifier, for example: The second usage sample at 1794 (the first is at 1793), with its use of the word unfledged, suggests that at least one person associated the term with the mythical winged beast: 1794 H. BOYD Indian Observ. No. 34.

Final Thoughts

⁋5 I am little better than an unfledged Griffin, according to the fashionable phrase here [i.e. in Madras]. Such usage continues down to Johnson's Dictionary, where "dragon" was defined in its modern meaning: A kind of winged serpent, perhaps imaginary, much celebrated in the romances of the middle age. So save in specialized or archaic uses, dragon outpaces the draconic sense of worm by the 16th century.