English Explanatory Dictionary

tatouay

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An armadillo (Cabassous tatouay), native to tropical South America; the broad-banded armadillo.

Word forms

tatouay tatouays

Etymology

From a compound word in a Tupi-Guarani language (compare tatu-ai), of which the first element is ultimately from Old Tupi tatu (“armadillo”). Compare Portuguese tatu, French tatou. The second element (ay or ai) may mean "wound" because of a belief that its fat was used on wounds, or "colored", or "worthless".

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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