rabbit
Meanings
- A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail.
- The meat from this animal.
- The fur of a rabbit typically used to imitate another animal's fur.
- A runner in a distance race whose goal is mainly to set the pace, either to tire a specific rival so that a teammate can win or to help another break a record; a pacesetter.
- A very poor batsman, selected as a bowler or wicket-keeper.
- A batsman who is frequently dismissed by the same bowler (said to be that player's rabbit).
- A large element at the beginning of a list of items to be bubble sorted, and thus tending to be quickly swapped into its correct position. Compare turtle.
- Rarebit; Welsh rabbit or a similar dish: melted cheese served atop toast.
- A pneumatically-controlled tool used to insert small samples of material inside the core of a nuclear reactor.
- A vibrator with a shaft and a clitoral stimulator usually shaped like a rabbit's ears.
- To hunt rabbits.
- To flee.
- To talk incessantly and in a childish manner; to babble annoyingly.
- Confound; damn; drat.
- The fourth of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal. See rub. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (“baby rabbit”) and in French rabot (“plane”)), coming via Walloon Old French (reflected nowadays as Walloon robète (“rabbit”)), from Middle Dutch robbe ("rabbit; seal"; whence Modern Dutch rob (“rabbit", also "seal”)); also Middle Low German robbe, rubbe (“rabbit”), and the later German Low German Rubbe, Robb (“seal”), West Frisian robbe (“seal”), Saterland Frisian Rubbe (“seal”), North Frisian rob (“seal”), borrowed into German Robbe (“seal”). Meant "young rabbit" until the 19th c., when it came to replace the original general term cony, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny, "vulva" (compare ass and donkey). Note that there is no inherited Germanic word for rabbits, since hares are the only leporids native to Britain (as with all of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France); rabbits were introduced from France in the late Middle Ages, likely after the Norman Invasion. (Fittingly, hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic.)