Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
a praying mantis

Oc. Mantis means 'priest' in Greek, so the praying always seemed redundant.


I was in my late adolescence before I learned that it was a "praying" mantis. As a pre-schooler and later, I always assumed it was a "preying" mantis, and spelled it that way. Of course, a strong argument could be made that the aforementioned redundancy exists in either case.