torpedo [E16th] Although we think of a torpedo as speeding through the water towards its target, at the heart of the word’s origin is the notion of slowness and paralysis. The electric ray, a sluggish sea fish that lives at the bottom of shallow water, produces an electric shock to capture prey and for defence. Its Latin name was torpedo, from torpere ‘to be numb or sluggish’, source also of torpid [LME], and when first used in English in the early 16th century torpedo referred to this ray. In the late 18th century the inventor of a timed explosive for detonation underwater gave it the name torpedo from the fish, and this is the ancestor of the modern self-propelled underwater missile.