Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A wildcat (Felis caracal syn. Lynx caracal) of Africa and southern Asia having short fawn-colored fur and long tufted ears.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A carnivorous digitigrade quadruped of the Felidæ, or cat family, and genus Lynx, L. caracal, inhabiting portions of northern Africa and southwestern Asia. It is about the size of a fox, is of a uniform deep-brown or wine-red color above, except a spot under each eye, and has tufts of long black hair which terminate the ears, whence its name. It possesses great strength and ferocity, and is sometimes used in the chase of the smaller quadrupeds and of the larger kinds of birds. It has been supposed to be the lynx of the ancients, and is sometimes called
Persian lynx . Also calledanak-el-ard .
Wiktionary
- n. A type of mountain cat, of genus Caracal, native to Southern Africa, Turkestan and India, Caracal caracal or Felis caracal.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) A lynx (Felis caracal syn. Lynx caracal). It is a native of Africa and Asia. Its ears are black externally, and tipped with long black hairs.
WordNet 3.0
- n. of deserts of northern Africa and southern Asia
Etymologies
- From Turkish karakulak. (Wiktionary)
- French, from Ottoman Turkish qaraqūlāq : qara, black + qūlāq, ear. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Farmers are using these traps to catch anything that is a 'problem animal' such as caracal, jackals and honey badgers. ”
“She cared about birds, baboons, whales and caracal cats.”
“They include Asiatic or golden jackal Canis aureus, fennec fox Fennecus zerda (K), Rüppells sand fox Vulpes rüppelli (K), caracal Felis caracal and sand cat Felis margarita (K).”
“Buncan saw the fox and caracal laugh uproariously but hardly spared a glance in their direction.”
“Muscles in the fox's neck and arms tensed while the caracal emitted a low, throaty snarl.”
“His road-toughened companions, a fox and caracal, didn't look like pushovers themselves.”
“The caracal laughed sharply, a sound like sandpaper on velvet.”
“Across the table the fox and caracal shared a meaningful chuckle.”
“More than 70 diurnal mammals have been described, including a number of carnivores such as spotted hyena Crocuta crocuta, common jackal Canis aureus, serval Felis serval, caracal F. caracal, lion Panthera leo, cheetah Acinonyx jubatus (T), and wild dog Lycaon pictus (T), previously considered locally extinct.”
“I once petted a snow leopard kitten, a caracal kitten, and a Siberian lynx kitten, all in one hour.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘caracal’.
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cats
alleycat, baudrons, bobcat, caracal, catamount, catamountain, cathood, catlike, cattish, cattishly, cheetah, chetah and 118 more...
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smoooth
satined, sleek, glossy, legato, uncrannied, suave, smoothen, polish, satiny, flowing, levigate, politic and 78 more...
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1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and Hi...
Bizarre stuff found there. Note that archaic terms are occasionally not spelled the way we spell them today; in these cases I've tried to link to the modernized spelling (where known) on the word p...
musk-bull, urus, zebu, cameleopard, ratel, suricate, wombach, saragoy, murine, ternate, coach dog, comforter and 91 more...
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wickedwitch's list
lll
alit, plinth, eclat, diaphanous, portico, nival, daedal, apse, fossa, pellet, avail, midge and 143 more...
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Miscellany, pt. c
chokedamp, clitter, circumbendibus, catmint, cacoëpy, co-feoffee, caribou, conturbation, chalicothere, calamus, cochineal, cincture and 168 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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Critters
cockle, cicada, appaloosa, brachiopod, bivalve, aye-aye, cygnet, alewife, chamois, ermine, drake, dugong and 381 more...
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.fauna
bruin, chrysalis, reynard, loris, pickerel, grayling, otter, ridley, gibbon, cricket, pachyderm, brill and 6 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for caracal.
knitandpurl "Hassan can watch as a marksman tracks a stag, a hart and a fawn, and at last bags a ram (a bwana as smart as Tarzan can trap all mammals: alpacas and llamas, caracals and pandas, aardvarks that can catch larval ants).
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27 May 19, 2010