chiefly nocturnal predacious arthropod having a flattened body of 15 to 173 segments each with a pair of legs, the foremost pair being modified as prehensors
Any arthropod of class Chilopoda, which have a segmented body with one pair of legs per segment and from about 20 to 300 legs in total.
The word comes from the French centipède, which was borrowed from the Latin centipēs. It combines the elements for "hundred" and "foot," meaning a creature with many legs.