rabbit
n. countablen. a small animal with long ears and a short tail that lives in holes in the ground. They are known for being fast and having soft fur.
n. a small, long-eared mammal of the family Leporidae, typically characterized by its burrowing habits and rapid reproductive rate.
A wild rabbit is eating grass in the garden.
The children watched quietly as a small brown rabbit hopped across the lawn toward the bushes.
Ecological studies in the region demonstrate how the introduction of a non-native rabbit population can lead to the rapid depletion of local vegetation and the subsequent erosion of topsoil.
From Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal. See rub. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (“baby rabbit”) and in French rabot (“plane”)), coming via Walloon Old French (reflected nowadays as Walloon robète (“rabbit”)), from Middle Dutch robbe ("rabbit; seal"; whence Modern Dutch rob (“rabbit", also "seal”)); also Middle Low German robbe, rubbe (“rabbit”), and the later German Low German Rubbe, Robb (“seal”), West Frisian robbe (“seal”), Saterland Frisian Rubbe (“seal”), North Frisian rob (“seal”), borrowed into German Robbe (“seal”). Meant "young rabbit" until the 19th c., when it came to replace the original general term cony, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny, "vulva" (compare ass and donkey). Note that there is no inherited Germanic word for rabbits, since hares are the only leporids native to Britain (as with all of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France); rabbits were introduced from France in the late Middle Ages, likely after the Norman Invasion. (Fittingly, hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic.)
From Cockney rhyming slang rabbit and pork, to talk.
Perhaps a corruption of rabate.
The word refers to the animal itself; 'rabbit' is also used uncountably when referring to its meat or fur.
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horse and rabbit stew
A mixture of the crude and the delicate in grossly unequal quantities, with the crude overwhelmingly dominant.
- 02
pull a rabbit out of a hat
To do something surprising and beneficial that is unexpected.
- 03
the rabbit died
Indicates one's own pregnancy, or that someone has found out they are pregnant.