Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A large herbaceous lizard (Sauromalus obesus) of the southwest United States and Mexico, related to the iguana.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A local name for Sauromalus ator, a large, dark-colored lizard, belonging to the iguana family and inhabiting the desert regious of southern California, Utah, and Nevada, and portions of Arizona and New Mexico. It reaches a length of a foot or more, feeds on plants, and is esteemed for food by the Indians.
Wiktionary
- n. A lizard, of the genus Sauromalus, living in arid regions of the Southwestern United States.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a herbivorous lizard that lives among rocks in the arid parts of southwestern United States and Mexico
Etymologies
- Spanish chacahuala, from either Shoshone tcaxxwal or Cahuilla cháxwal. (Wiktionary)
- American Spanish chacahuala, from Cahuilla tcáxxwal. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Case knew the cove because it was the landing point for Cañon de las Palmas, a site of his long-term chuckwalla work.”
“Summer temperatures routinely soar above 120 degrees, and unless you are a chuckwalla lizard, your discomfort at any time of year will likely range from mildly overheated to thoroughly scorched.”
“The many reptiles include the common chuckwalla, Texas horned lizard, desert spiny lizard, and various species of rattlesnakes.”
“He could easily have cited the Aldabran tortoise, the chuckwalla of Angel de la Guarda, the hippo of Madagascar, the beetles of Madeira, the elephantids of Timor, the iguanas of the Galápagos, the finches of Darwin and Lack, the earwig of Saint Helena, and the dodo.”
“They tried chuckwallas too, but chuckwalla meat turned out to be more disagreeable than starvation.”
“Of course the ultimate indignity, worse even than going home without chuckwalla data, is death.”
“He has surveyed the chuckwalla population here every summer for twelve years.”
“He has been afloat for three days at a stretch, unable to land safely on any of those rocky islands, trapped on the boat, using a bucket for his latrine, running short of gas, putting life jackets on the carboys of drinking water in anticipation of shipwreck, and then finally limping back to Bahia without having captured a single chuckwalla—which for him represents the penultimate indignity.”
“The chuckwalla mortality is alarming, but another alarm rings somewhat more stridently.”
“He makes a few observations about the ecology of the giant chuckwalla.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chuckwalla’.
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From the Algonquin et al.
Words derived from the innumerable languages of native Americans and the First Nations of Canada. I want to shine some light on this underexposed etymological background to so many common (and som...
raccoon, persimmon, mummichog, caucus, bayou, caribou, geoduck, chipmunk, skunk, opossum, moose, squash and 84 more...
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Best beasts
agouti, doodlebug, colugo, yeti crab, gribble, unau, kudu, basenji, boomslang, triantelope, acouchy, hallucigenia and 75 more...
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In the Desert
arroyo, bajada, semiaridity, playa, mesa, anticline, blowout, hogback, hoodoo, yuccas, creosote bushes, agaves and 23 more...
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out forms
Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
chinoiserie, rhyparography, Ludibrium, Tarasque, Trabant, joropo, blocage, crannog, whitsour, zampogna, scamillus, Kacapi and 77 more...
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Lizards
skink, anole, iguana, basilisk, gecko, agama, sungazer, monitor, chuckwalla, zonure, chameleon, swift and 35 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chuckwalla.
madmouth ...and she is come to bring the jest full circle
*heads solemnly bowed* Dec 11, 2009
mollusque So the chuckwalla handles unruly lounge lizards! Dec 11, 2009
bilby :-)))
Bahahahah, yes!!! Dec 10, 2009
madmouth who's to say that isn't exactly what they call, say, club bouncers on the subcontinent, though? Dec 10, 2009
bilby Blast that madmouth, I was just about to fake it. Dec 10, 2009
madmouth the etymology, to boot (if wikipedia can be trusted) has nothing to with Hindi--deriving "from the Shoshone word 'tcaxxwal' or Cahuilla 'caxwal', transcribed by Spaniards as 'chacahuala'" Dec 10, 2009
mollusque The American Heritage Dictionary is aiming to displace Weirdnet. Did you know that the chuckwalla is a "large herbaceous lizard"? Dec 10, 2009