What I didn't know about "wyvern"

1. It's supposed to be pronounced with a long vowel, i.e. /'waivərn/. My brothers and I have always used /ɪ/ and it never occurred to any of that it might be different.
2. It's from French. You wouldn't think it, what with that initial w, but there are a few other words like this--war, warrant, wicket, wage, etc. You can thank the crazy Normans for that!
3. It's a doublet of "viper". VIPERA(M) > OFr vivre > ME wyvre. (The excrescent final n first shows up at the beginning of the 17th century.) Speaking of doublets, the Old French version later split into vouivre and guivre.
4. The Catalan version has boobs. Apparently, this is a variant which first appeared in an 8th-century bestiary and for some reason really caught on in Catalonia. In fact, the wyvern is so popular there that:
5. It's the mascot of several Catalan cities, including Reus, Tarragona, and the neighbourhoods of Poblenou and Nou Barris in Barcelona.