Cursed language fact
"Pteron" (πτερόν) is Ancient Greek for "wing" or "feather" and "daktulos" (δάκτυλος ) is "finger". So "pterodactyl" roughly translates as "wing finger". That part is not cursed, it's just a fun fact.
The cursed part is this: "helicopter" breaks down as "helico-pter" not "heli-cop-ter". 'Helico" comes from "helix" (ἕλιξ), meaning a spiral or something twisted, so loosely "spiraling wing".
enjoy
Cursed language fact
Along the same lines:
"tele-" is an Ancient Greek prefix meaning "at a distance" or "far away".
Hence various compound words that sandwich it together with other bits of Greek:
"telegraph", sort of "scribbles [writing] at a distance"
"telephone", "phono" is sound or "voice" so that's "voice/sound at a distance", all good
So we started prefixing tele- to things. Including "television". But vision is _not_ Greek! It's from Latin.
Cursed language fact
From the box of weird combinations, albeit within a single language:
A porcupine in Polish is called "jeżozwierz". "Jeż" means hedgedog, "zwierz" means animal (with slight hint of "beast").
