Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of several nocturnal marsupials of the family Phalangeridae of New Guinea, Australia, and adjacent islands, having large eyes, small ears, a pointed snout, and a long prehensile tail.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A genus of marsupial quadrupeds of the Australian and Papuan islands, including opossum-like prehensile-tailed phalangers, covered with dense woolly fur, having a small head and large eyes, living in trees, and characterized by slow movements.
- noun The commercial name for the long fibrous aromatic root of cuscus-grass, which is used for making tatties or screens, ornamental baskets, etc.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A soft grass (
Pennisetum typhoideum ) found in all tropical regions, used as food for men and cattle in Central Africa.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun zoology A type of
marsupial fromNew Guinea ; thetree kangaroo .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun woolly-haired monkey-like arboreal marsupial of New Guinea and northern Australia
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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On considering what the animal could be, I recollected one called the cuscus, a picture of which I had seen in one of Mr Hooker's books.
In the Eastern Seas William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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We saw numerous pigeons also, and a curious animal called the cuscus, something like an opossum, with a long tail, small head, large eyes, and a dense covering of woolly fur.
The Mate of the Lily Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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Its namesake dish, cuscus alla Trapanese, is a tagine-like couscous served with seafood soup, prawns and monkfish, and its historic center features tightly packed streets that were once surrounded by the casbah walls.
Monique Stringfellow: Sicily's Wild Western Coast Monique Stringfellow 2011
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Pretty tame but if they had done the nasnas in some cuscus then Chip Ahoy could have blogged about it.
“Want to do some Nasnas?” Ann Althouse 2009
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Everyone will come into the room and the silky cuscus: the new subspecies will sort of glide down on special suspension things, wearing a cape, and he will basically be cute all over everybody while they pronounce his species name in many different ways.
newly discovered animals in Papua New Guinea | clusterflock 2009
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I thought cuscus was an alternative spelling of couscous.
“Want to do some Nasnas?” Ann Althouse 2009
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Smaller creatures, too: wolverines and otters, a cuscus, a bandicoot, a pack of foxes.
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September 11th, 2009 at 8:29 am silky cuscus silky cuscus
newly discovered animals in Papua New Guinea | clusterflock 2009
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Yes, but they found a new subspecies of the silky cuscus, which was previously unknown to science.
newly discovered animals in Papua New Guinea | clusterflock 2009
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Besides the flying foxes, the admiralty cuscus (Spilocuscus kraemeri) is the only endemic cuscus in the hotspot, being confined to the Admiralty Islands.
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