Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several herbivorous mammals of the family Procaviidae within the order Hyraoidea of Africa and adjacent Asia, resembling woodchucks or similar rodents but more closely related to the hoofed mammals. Also called coney1, dassie.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The typical genus of the family Hyracidæ and order Hyracoidea, having the molar teeth like those of a rhinoceros in pattern, the lower incisors only slightly notched, the upper incisors approximated, and the upper lip cleft. It has 7 cervical, 22 dorsal. 8 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 6 caudal vertebræ. The genus contains the terrestrial and saxicoline species of Africa and Syria, as H. capensis, H. habessinicus, H. syriacus, variously known as conies, damans, rock-badgers, rock-rabbits, etc. It was formerly conterminous with the family Hyracidæ.
- n. [lowercase] An animal of the genus Hyrax.
Wiktionary
- n. any of several small, ungulate herbivorous mammals, of the order Hyracoidea, with a bulky frame and fang-like incisors; they are native to Africa and the Middle East.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) Any animal of the genus Hyrax, of which about four species are known. They constitute the order Hyracoidea. The best known species are the daman (Hyrax Syriacus) of Palestine, and the klipdas (Hyrax capensis) of South Africa. Other species are Hyrax arboreus and Hyrax Sylvestris, the former from Southern, and the latter from Western, Africa. See Daman.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of several small ungulate mammals of Africa and Asia with rodent-like incisors and feet with hooflike toes
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek ὕραξ (hurax, "shrewmouse"). (Wiktionary)
- New Latin, from Greek hurax, shrew mouse. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“CORWIN: And actually, the hyrax, which is so amazing, is a relative of elephants.”
“JEDDAH: There is a little known furry critter known as the hyrax that scurries about on rocks in Saudi Arabia.”
“They are said to proceed from a kind of hyrax (?) about the size of a rabbit; the Krumen call it a 'bush-dog', and, as will appear, Cameron holds it to be a lemur.”
“The hunter should patiently wait until the first hyrax, which is usually the leader, comes out of its hiding to lead the others.”
“The same prohibition applies to the hyrax as to rabbits and hares.”
““The hyrax chews the cud but does not have split hooves; so it is unclean” Leviticus 11:5 NLT.”
“There is something inexplicable about East Africa: its endless skies dotted with puffs of clouds that seem within arms reach, the smell of dry brush on the savannah, the billowing dust on rutted dirt roads; the screams of a hyrax, the way the sun, cartoon-like, suddenly pops up at dawn and as quickly drops down at the same time every evening.”
“Mr. Laudamiel used 25 ingredients to create the scent, including amyl acetate, which smells like pear and banana, synthetic civet, which smells vaguely fecal, and hyraceum absolute, an extract made from the excrement of the rock hyrax, a small African mammal.”
“Log in to Reply inkbot (UID#1384) on October 30th, 2009 at 12: 40 pm wtf is a hyrax?”
“There are rock hyrax droppings everywhere – a vital sign as leopards love to eat these small mammals.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hyrax’.
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phrontistery - h
from phrontistery.info
habanera, habile, habiliment, hackle, hackney, hadal, hame, hank, hansom, hapax, hark, harl and 568 more...
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hyraxes
something that looks like a cross
between a rabbit and a rat
4 species
known as dassies in South Africarock hyrax, tree hyrax, yellow-spotted ro..., western tree hyrax, southern tree hyrax, hyrax, daman, dassie, hyracoid, das, rock-badger, klipdas and 6 more...
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Flora and fauna ending in 'x'
Scientific names are in, but bacteria and viruses are out, so no -poxes.
Also no Gauls.ibex, fox, ilex, ox, phoenix, lynx, hyrax, sphinx, chevaux, tamarix, tortrix, dipteryx and 59 more...
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Animals (besides pottos)
.
robin, wagtail, frog, bunny, pronk, rabbit, fur, badger, mouse, bee, crepuscular, purr and 140 more...
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Unusual words for Words With Friends
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
botel, slipe, jeu, chub, chubs, cote, mure, tittle, dev, loo, hoke, helo and 357 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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Word Gems
foist, coercion, abecedism, abiectic, abigeus, abiogenesis, ablaut, thunderstruck, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, filagree, blotto and 196 more...
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Wordnik Notebooks
All the words from the cover of the Wordnik notebook.
A few words appear twice: frass, cruet, luna, thalweg, and possibly some more.
Careful: Contains spoilers!spilth, frass, fomite, rux, worricow, alizarin, mundungus, parthenocarpy, jib, whinyard, weisure, nimiety and 217 more...
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Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 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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animalia
Creatures with interesting names/lives.
salamander, badger, varmint, wombat, skink, tortoise, pika, gnu, pangolin, porpoise, serval, walrus and 53 more...
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2013 Words
Words looked up during 2013
muscadine, wisteria, mullions, chiaroscuro, lucubrate, anaerobe, anorectic, roke, quagga, blancmange, hyrax, pogrom and 4 more...
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Rodents
A list of types of rodent, focusing on those with unusual names.
cavy, chinchilla, rat, mouse, nutria, capybara, hyrax, viscacha, gerbil, gopher, beaver, jerboa and 17 more...
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ynaffit's Words
sedulous, vituperative, pullulating, erstwhile, imbroglio, asperity, cynosure, adumbrate, prosopopoeia, peerless, calumny, ague and 272 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hyrax.
trivet the elephant's closest living relative, looks rather like a marmot with no tail Feb 8, 2007