Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various Old World carnivorous mammals of the genus Herpestes and related genera, having a slender agile body and a long tail and noted for the ability to seize and kill venomous snakes.
Wiktionary
- n. Carnivores of the family Herpestidae and the similar Malagasy mongooses (Galidiinae), ranging in size from small rats to large cats, including the Indian mongoose famed as a predators of venomous snakes.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) A species of ichneumon (Herpestes griseus), native of India. Applied also to other allied species, as the African banded mongoose (Crossarchus fasciatus).
- n. A Madagascan lemur (Lemur mongos).
WordNet 3.0
- n. agile grizzled Old World viverrine; preys on snakes and rodents
Etymologies
- From Portuguese mangus, from Marathi मुंगूस (mumgūsa), from Telugu ముంగిస (muṅgisa). (Wiktionary)
- Marathi mangūs, of Dravidian origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Is it what they call the mongoose, or monsoon, or something?”
“That thing about the plural of the word mongoose, before we get to the real stuff, Doug in Connecticut says, "I once asked my father the correct plural of mongoose.”
“Frankly, I thought the mongoose was a made up mythical creature… until I saw one.”
“Only problem is that the mongoose is a diurnal (daytime) hunter, and rats are active at night (nocturnal).”
“However, I think I would have used to word mongoose, as that was how I described what we were talking about.”
“Now and then the mongoose, useful as a destroyer of snakes and rats, may be caught sight of, with his long coarse fur, running across the road, or hunting along a fence, much in the same way as a weasel shows himself in England, although the mongoose is a good deal larger.”
““Why, a mongoose is a little animal we use for killing snakes.””
“The mongoose is a small beast of prey of the Viverridæ family.”
“Throughout its range in the western hemisphere, the mongoose is a pest; and the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture has done well in securing the enactment of a law peremptorily prohibiting the importation of any animals of that species into the United States or any of its colonies.”
“Why, a mongoose is a little animal we use for killing snakes.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mongoose’.
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• De rerum natura
What is this list about?
Interesting words in nature and natural science (in any language!).
What kind of words am I supposed to add?
You can add species names that you lov...lagerstätte, parthenogenesis, bushbaby, lepidoptera, dinoflagellate, pupation, chrysalis, ephemeroptera, deinococcus radio..., homoplasy, sciophilous, syncytium and 218 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Two years
Okay, I admit it. I made a list of words my daughter knew when she was two years old.
bat, baba, a, abalone, about, acorn, adrienne, after, again, airplane, alison, all and 694 more...
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Problematic Plurals
mongoose, octopus, mouse, quorum, compactus, gateaux, people, moose, ottoman
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soul mate
soul mate, soul mates, soul, portishead, wounded, death, depression, hurt, the cure, pain, longing, rat and 424 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
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Animals With Nifty Names
hamster, gerbil, ferret, horse, skink, newt, shark, octopus, weasel, panda, giraffe, hyena and 129 more...
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die6die's Words
somnambulist, obfuscate, hirsute, kleptobibliomania, serendipitous, dissuade, duplicitous, zounds, lo, unleash, fortnight, thaumaturgy and 278 more...
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MacBean's Words
verisimilitude, antediluvian, schadenfreude, eviscerate, exsanguinate, onomatopoeia, aesthetic, apocryphal, aubergine, byronic, brouhaha, bordello and 523 more...
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sfan
wan, citroen, aramaic, arabic, hebrew, mosque, oran, synagogue, anisette, almighty, blum, cremieux and 55 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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wordsmitten's Words
cephalopod, quagmire, surreptitious, crux, anemone, chicanery, euphony, myopia, schadenfreude, dovetail, callipygian, simian and 10 more...
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heidikraut's Words
scrumptious, flatter, constrain, sip, stipple, frail, feeble, consequential, humbled, supposition, velvet, flitten and 28 more...
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Sog's Ark
Unlike Noah, I have only one of each animal.
salamander, panther, aardvark, leopard, elver, weasel, cheetah, orang utan, snail, parakeet, slater, scarab and 23 more...
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zoology
animals of interest
sloth, kakapo, kaka, hoatzin, numbat, wombat, hyena, wallaby, emu, morepork, jackdaw, magpie and 73 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mongoose.
bilby I vote for mongooze. That's made my day and I only just woke up. Mar 26, 2008
sarra By the reckoning of the mighty Oxford English Dictionary (why yes, we are sleeping together), the plural can be any of mongooses, mongeese, mongoose or mongooze(!!) Mar 25, 2008
sonofgroucho :-) Jan 27, 2008
asativum The zoo-keeper, having prepared a shipment to another zoo, was stymied when drafting the cover letter. "Enclosed are the two mongeese..." He scratched it out and wrote: "Enclosed are the two mongooses..." He scratched that out too.
Finally, he wrote: "Enclosed is the mongoose you requested. Also enclosed is the other mongoose you requested."
Jan 27, 2008