Noun

(en noun)

A long, slender, chiefly terrestrial amphibian of the order Caudata, resembling a lizard or a newt.

* 1672 , (Thomas Browne), (Pseudodoxia Epidemica)'', 1852, Simon Wilkin (editor), ''The Works of Sir Thomas Browne , Volume 1, page 292,

and most plainly Pierius, whose words in his hieroglyphicks are these: "Whereas it is commonly said that a salamander extinguisheth fire, we have found by experience that it is so far from quenching hot coals, that it dyeth immediately therein."

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Douglas Larson , title=Runaway Devils Lake , volume=100, issue=1, page=46 , magazine= citation , passage=Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.}}

(mythology) A creature much like a lizard that is resistant to and lives in fire, hence the elemental being of fire.

* 1920 , , The Understanding Heart , Chapter XI

“Not a chance, Ranger,” Bob Mason was speaking. “This little cuss is a salamander . He's been travelling through fire all day and there isn't a blister on him. …”

* 1849 , John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar and Provincial Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions , Volume 3, page 372

"There is a vulgar error," says the author of the Brief Natural History, p. 91, "that a salamander' lives in the fire. Yet both Galen and Dioscorides refute this opinion; and Mathiolus, in his Commentaries upon Dioscorides, a very famous physician, affirms of them, that by casting of many a ' salamander into the fire for tryal he found it false. The same experiment is likewise avouched by Joubertus."

(cooking) A metal utensil with a flat head which is heated and put over a dish to brown the top.

* 1977 , Richard Daunton-Fear, Penelope Vigar, Australian Colonial Cookery (discussing 19th century cookery), Rigby, 1977, ISBN 0-7270-0187-6, page 41

The salamander , a fairly long metal utensil with a flat rounded head, was left in the fire until red hot and then used to brown the top of a dish without further cooking.

(cooking) A small broiler, used in professional cookery primarily for browning.

The chef first put the steak under the salamander to sear the outside.

*

The (pouched gopher), , of the southern United States.

(UK, obsolete) A large poker.

(Halliwell)

(metallurgy) Solidified material in a furnace hearth.

Noun

(en noun)

A small to mid-size reptile, of the family Chamaeleonidae , and one of the best known lizard families able to change color and project its long tongue.

A person with inconstant behavior; one able to quickly adjust to new circumstances.

* 2014 , Michael White, " Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe", The Guardian , 8 September 2014:

He is a political chameleon , as charming to business leaders he met privately in Aberdeen on Friday night as he has been inspiring to distressed and desperate Labour defectors in Glasgow and beyond.

(physics) A hypothetical scalar particle with a non-linear self-interaction, giving it an effective mass that depends on its environment: the presence of other fields.