By: Coyote
Among weres, theriotype refers to what type of nonhuman animal "wereside" a therianthrope (aka were) has or what type of animal (besides human) that they feel they are.
For example, if you are a Cougar person, or a "werecougar", you might say that your theriotype is "Cougar".
The word theriotype is closely related to the term "wereside" and in some cases, the terms are used almost interchangeably.
Someone might say:
"My theriotype is Wolf"
or
"I have a wolf wereside"
Note: The word theriotype replaces the word "phenotype", which should now be considered a deprecated term. It is intended to be used in place of the word "
phenotype" when therians are need a word to describe what kind of therian they are. For many years, the word phenotype was used to describe what kind of animal a therianthrope identified as, but because "phenotype" is already used in biology to mean something completely different, it causes confusion.
Theriotype is a word chosen/coined to describe something specific to therians/weres.
Phenotype is a term borrowed (many would say incorrectly) from existing terminology used for something else.
See also: