Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A long-legged wildcat (Felis serval) of Africa, having a tawny coat with black spots and large erect ears without tufts.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The African tiger-cat, Felis serval. It is long-bodied and short-tailed, without penciling of the ears, of a tawny color spotted with black, and about 30 inches long, exclusive of the tail, which is 10 inches long and ringed. Also called
bushcat .
Wiktionary
- n. A medium-sized African wild cat. Scientific name: Leptailurus serval or Felis serval.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) An African wild cat (Felis serval) of moderate size; -- called also
serval cat . It has rather long legs and a tail of moderate length. Its color is tawny, with black spots on the body and rings of black on the tail.
WordNet 3.0
- n. slender long-legged African wildcat having large untufted ears and tawny black-spotted coat
Etymologies
- From French serval, from Portuguese cerval ("Iberian lynx"), from Latin lupus ("wolf") cervarius ("pertaining to a stag") (wolf that hunts the stag), cervus ("deer, stag"). (Wiktionary)
- French, from Portuguese (lobo) cerval, deerlike (wolf), lynx, from Late Latin cervālis, from Latin cervus, deer. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The wildcat, called a serval, is a medium-sized African animal that resembles a cheetah with large ears.”
“For those of you who don't know (and I certainly didn't), a serval is a medium sized African wildcat and a coatimundi is part of the raccoon family.”
“The article in the New York Post serval months ago, which depicted Obama asw a monkey.”
“PARADIGM SHIFT — Mar 5 — In the next serval days POF will be releasing a paid feature.”
Plentyoffish Serious Member Profile Upgrade… « The Paradigm Shift
“In the distance, a leopard-spotted serval cat took in the scene from the shade, while a hippo honked and grunted just out of sight.”
The Huffington Post: Rob Pringle: Where the Rift Valley Ends
“Jacopo was finding an audience for his antics with the serval and was clearly loving the attention.”
“Regarding the tea party, it is sad that everyone listen's to their bull crap instead of thinking for themselves and getting out the information that is listed on serval sites on their computers and do their own research.”
Welcome to the Tea Party: Infighting plagues conservative group
“A serval was caught roaming around Battle Creek, MI.”
“An escaped serval was shot in Chester County raiding chickens.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘serval’.
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US - war on terror
mirandize, heavily-guarded h..., capture, manhunt, shootout, bloodied, suspect, gunshot wound, citywide lockdown, house-by-house se..., intelligence oppo..., naturalized Ameri... and 463 more...
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cats
alleycat, baudrons, bobcat, caracal, catamount, catamountain, cathood, catlike, cattish, cattishly, cheetah, chetah and 118 more...
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tHe Best Animals Ever
giraffe, elepant, cattle, water buffalo, langur monkey, baboon, lion, antelope, cheetah, tapeworm, kangaroo, bullfrog and 102 more...
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News haikus
It rhymes! But the news of the day doesn't have to, as long as it has 17 syllables.
ill will, stimulus, citizen, serval, undersea, sewage, aerosolization, lunch, strike, torch, fraternity, molecular and 2 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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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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General Loveliness
hirsute, indubitably, gossamer, continuum, murderous, harpy, chimera, foofaraw, hoi polloi, mollycoddle, villein, nonplussed and 121 more...
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Words I Learned on FreeRice.com
A place for me to keep all these weird words, whether I guessed them correctly or not.
pennoncel, serval, tautological, redact, ganef, candent, shaitan, bifid, osteal, ensiform, helve, ecdysis and 100 more...
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Animal Kingdom
Words of the wild
puttock, starling, Bengal, springbok, quokka, serval, kudu, babirusa, tippler
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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...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for serval.
asativum Several servals
Spotted strolling Seattle,
Seeking savanna.
"Spotted in Seattle -- yet another wild cat," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 26,2008. Jan 28, 2008
chained_bear Huh. Learned this just now on www.freerice.com. Jan 11, 2008