Whether with four legs or two, wyverns and dragons have visually become synonymous in high fantasy movies, TV shows and games, as evidenced by the fact Skyrim and Game of Thrones have no qualms about calling their wyverns 'dragons.' Of course, we aren't dragon scholars, and we are pretty sure the people having this dragon/wyvern debate on the Internet aren't either.

The term 'wyvern' descends from the Latin word for 'viper', 'adder' or 'asp,' according to the Oxford English Dictionary, while 'dragon' descends from the Latin term for 'huge serpent.' Though similar, these are intended to be distinguished as separate types of creatures, and aren't synonymous with one another. If you go back to the root of the word, technically a wyvern is not just another name for a dragon. I'm here to shame the 40k who upvote wyvern posts. While Redditor Masta-Pasta took to Reddit to shame the many thousands of people sharing this now age-old debate over whether Skyrim and Game of Thrones features dragons or wyverns, they did get one key point wrong in their meme-ery: As you can see in this drawing of Aegon the Conqueror riding Balerion the Black Dread, as depicted by Jordi Gonzalez Escamilla, these creatures have two wings and two back legs: Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire world stems back to the concept art used in the Game of Thrones encyclopedia A World of Ice and Fire. This visual depiction of dragons in George R.R. Nerdist's Sarah Keartes ran an article/PSA back in 2016 explaining how Daenerys' children are, technically speaking, also wyvern.

This semantics debate about which creatures are or aren't dragons isn't a new one, especially around Game of Thrones.

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