A hapax legomenon is a word or phrase that occurs only once within a given context. In numerous cases, the original Hebrew animal names in the Old Testament are used only once or twice with very little context given, usually without description. Sometimes an educated guess was made by the translators (particularly when the etymology of the word suggested a particular behavior or trait), but often such words have little support for their translation. Sometimes early translators would simply choose European animals with which they were familiar.
