here be dragons meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

here be dragons

phrase

Etymology Evidence of the use of this term as a notation on actual historical maps is lacking. The only known appearance of an equivalent phrase in any language on a historical map is of Latin HC SVNT DRACONES (“here are dragons”), placed on the east coast of Asia, on the Hunt-Lenox Globe, which dates from c. 1510. The phrase is simply a variation on HIC SVNT LEONES ("here are lions"), the classical phrase used by medieval cartographers to denote unknown territories on maps.

A fanciful notation, commonly attributed to historical maps, held to indicate either the belief that unknown dangers exist in a certain location on the map, or that actual dragons can be found there.

It's like in those old maps of the world, where the mapmakers wrote, "Here be dragons" on the unexplored parts of the globe.1994, Steven Henry Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering, page 11:
The awakening world scrawled ‘Here Be Dragons’ across the unknown territory.2004, Nornie Campbell, No Dragons Here, page 253:

1 more example

When the old seafarers encountered uncharted territory, they would find those blank areas on the map marked with the phrase “Here be Dragons” and the image of a sea serpent or a similarly ferocious creature.2011, Susie Vrobel, Fractal Time: Why a Watched Kettle Never Boils, page 255:

By extension, used to indicate that which is unknown or uncertain, particularly if it seems to carry some type of risk.

Here be dragons in the shape of London landladies, owners of small hotels ('B. & B.') in the streets off the lower end of Euston Road. . .1962, Geoffrey Fletcher, The London Nobody Knows, page 16:
. . . let me go into what was the unknown, ‘Here-be-Dragons’, hinterland of science, to find out what made scientists tick. . .1987, Ritchie Calder, reported in New Scientist, Vol. 114, No. 1559, May 7, 1987, p. 61

3 more examples

Speaking of money... here be dragons... Do you charge?1993, Incorporated Association of Organists, Organists' Review, Volume 79, Issues 309-312, p. 219
Analytical philosophers mark "Here be dragons" on the part of the intellectual map that belongs to phenomenology.1997, William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought, page 191:
In undertaking such a task, I realise that I am venturing into uncharted waters, or at least waters for which only charts of the ‘here be dragons’ variety exist.1997, Charles Jones, The Edinburgh history of the Scots language, page 336:

Synonyms: here be monsters, there be dragons
Related terms: non plus ultra