opossum

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“
Throughout the animal kingdom generally, indeed, this correspondence, or rather this chain of causation, makes itself everywhere felt; no high intelligence without a highly developed prehensile and grasping organ Perhaps the opossum is the very best and most crucial instance that could possibly be adduced of the intimate connection which exists between touch and intellect.

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Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun Any of various nocturnal, usually arboreal marsupials of the family Didelphidae, especially Didelphis marsupialis of the Western Hemisphere, having a thick coat of hair, a long snout, and a long prehensile tail. See Regional Note at possum.
  2. noun Any of several similar marsupials of Australia belonging to the family Phalangeridae.
  3. Word History
    The word opossum takes us back to the earliest days of the American colonies. The settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607 by the London Company, chartered for the planting of colonies. Even though the first years were difficult, promotional literature was glowing. In one such piece, A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia, published in 1610, we find this passage: "There are ... Apossouns, in shape like to pigges.” This is the first recorded use of opossum, although in a spelling that differs from the one later settled on to reproduce the sound of the Virginia Algonquian word from which our word came. The word opossum and its shortened form possum, first recorded in 1613 in more promotional literature, remind us of a time when the New World was still very new, settlers were few, and the inhabitants for whom the New World was not new were plentiful.

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Examples (50)

  • The wonder to us was that this extremely irascible and venomous serpent should be living in a nest with a large family of opossums, for it must be borne in mind that the opossum is a rapacious and an exceedingly savage-tempered beast This then was the world in which I moved and had my being, within the limits of the old rat-haunted fosse among the enchanted trees. —  Far Away And Long Ago
  • English colonists, encountering unfamiliar plants and animals-among them moose, opossum, and skunk-borrowed Indian terms to name them. —  infoplease - Daily Almanac
  • Today all the students got to touch an opossum, an owl and a salamander. —  Classified Ads
  • It is a smaller animal than the opossum, aquatic in its habits, and in fact approaches nearer to the family of the water-rats. —  Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found A Book of Zoology for Boys
  • I have often thought what a pity it would be if the 'coon and the opossum should be extirpated before slavery itself became extinct. —  The Hunters' Feast Conversations Around the Camp Fire
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Virginia Algonquian.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly also opassom; also, and still in rural use, abbreviation possum, formerly possowne; American Indian
 

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/əˈpɑsəm/
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