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The first recorded reference to a pterodactyl is in Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology. In it, Lyell predicts, ‘The pterodactyle might flit again through umbrageous groves of tree-ferns.’ Whether pterodactyls could ever have been described as flitting is open to doubt, but what’s significant here is that new words have to be coined for new uses, and that one of the biggest creators of new words is science.

Scientists are only human. They want their coinages to have a bit of class—and what could be more classy than a bit of Latin or (still better) Greek? And since the ancient Greeks were fond of their initial Ps, our language is now adorned with pterodactyls and ptomaine and psychology and many others. The trouble with these introductions, of course, is that English tongues can’t really wrap themselves around such (to us) exotic constructions. So the pronunciation tends to be anglicized, while the spelling resolutely isn’t.