panda
n. countablen. a large black-and-white animal that looks like a bear and lives in China. It is famous for eating bamboo.
n. a large, bear-like mammal native to south-central China, characterised by its distinctive black-and-white coat and diet consisting almost exclusively of bamboo.
The giant panda eats bamboo in the forest.
Visitors at the zoo waited for hours to see the new panda cub playing with its mother.
Conservation efforts have successfully moved the giant panda from the endangered list to the vulnerable category, though habitat loss remains a significant threat to their long-term survival.
Borrowed from French panda, of unclear ultimate origin but probably from the second element of nigálya-pónya, a local name for the red panda recorded in Nepal and Sikkim by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800 or 1801 – 1894), an ethnologist, naturalist and the British Resident of Nepal, possibly from Nepali निँगाले (nĩgāle, “relating to a certain species of bamboo”) (the adjectival form of निँगालो (nĩgālo), a variant of निङालो (niṅālo, “Drepanostachyum intermedium, a species of bamboo”)) + a regional Tibetan name for the animal (compare regional Tibetan ཕོ་ཉ (pho nya, “messenger”)). Attributive uses of sense 2 (“a giant panda”) generally refer to that animal’s distinctive black and white coat colour.
Borrowed from Hindi पंडा (paṇḍā) and Punjabi ਪਾਂਡਾ (pāṇḍā), both from Sanskrit पण्डित (paṇḍita, “learned, wise; learned man, pundit, scholar, teacher; Hindu Brahmin who has memorized a substantial proportion of the Vedas”). Doublet of pundit.