When the term entered the East Norse language is unknown. The form "dragon", in modern English, stems from , while the Germanic Old English form survives as drake.

A poem, by 11th-century Icelandic skáld Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, manages to use all four above mentioned terms in a single poem about Sigurd the dragon slayer, based on a fight between a blacksmith and a leather worker, which Arnórsson supposedly composed spontaneously upon