rabbit
/ˈrabɪt
/- Family Leporidae: several genera and species, in particular the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which is often kept as a pet or raised for food.
- Appearances were put in by eastern chipmunks, gray squirrels, a rabbit and our new resident woodchuck.
- Two new extinct species are named (a rabbit and squirrel) and two of the mustelids may represent extinct new species as well.
Synonyms
- From every kitchen in the village arose the most delicious aromas: apple pies, rabbit and chicken pies, fairy cakes, pancakes.
- Wild rabbit has a much darker flesh than farmed rabbit, but both are extremely versatile and, because of the price, you can afford to experiment.
- My recipe for today is an old Australian country recipe for rabbit pie.
- There were platform shoes, rabbit coats, sausage curls and blue eye shadow - and the women weren't a pretty sight either.
- Elsewhere both the English and Indian rabbits failed miserably in their quest for world domination.
- Bon voyage and thank your mother for the rabbits!
- Thanks for the lift and thank your mother for the rabbits.
- I'm out of here, thank you boys, and thank your mother for the rabbits.
- Hunting with dogs would ban a number of less well-known bloodsports, like hare coursing, mink hunting, rabbiting with terriers.
- This was it, Evelyn recalls thinking, everything would go back to how it used to be; they would go rabbiting in the Phoenix Park, take trips in the car and visit the strawberry beds.
- It does, however, need plenty of exercise and will enjoy a days rabbiting, should the opportunity arise.
- Our mate Robbo came over here for a few weeks last year and when he got back he couldn't stop rabbiting on about the place.
- Some of you may remember, in the dim and distant recesses of your cobwebbed memory, that last week I was rabbiting on about my son's chums and their abundance of confidence when it came to chit-chatting with adults.
- He answered the shop phone and an executive-type started rabbiting on about buying a laptop computer.
- Frank, why did you rabbit?
- I spotted him, and he rabbited and abandoned the car.
- A rushing in the bushes to her left let her know the Doolittle boys had rabbited.
Phrases
breed like rabbits
pull (or bring) a rabbit out of the (or a) hat
thank your mother for the rabbits
Derivatives
rabbity
- The playwright's rabbity, put-upon Everyloser is a clock-tower sniper in the making; a weird, nervous, socially maladjusted little knot of nerves riddled with neuroses, delusions and obsessive-compulsions.
- There - munching on a pot plant, stuffing his insolent rabbity face.
- He paused, his black, rabbity eyes examining the audience.
Origin
Late Middle English: apparently from Old French (compare with French dialect rabotte 'young rabbit'), perhaps of Dutch origin (compare with Flemish robbe).
We think of rabbits as being as much part of the language as of the countryside, but the rabbit was introduced to Britain by the Normans in the 12th century to provide meat and fur. The name is not recorded until the late 14th century, when it meant particularly a young animal of this kind. Before that, rabbits were known as conies. In 16th-century slang a coney was what we would now call a mark—someone to cheat or rob, and doing so was known as ‘coney-catching’. We are not sure where rabbit comes from, but it seems to have come into English from Old French, related to French dialect rabotte meaning ‘young rabbit’. It may be of Dutch origin and have a link with Flemish robbei ‘rabbit’. To breed like rabbits is to reproduce prolifically, like the animal itself. This view of rabbits is of quite long standing. In 1868 Queen Victoria explained why she could not be too excited by acquiring a fourteenth grandchild. ‘It seems to me’ she wrote to her eldest daughter ‘to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park!’ A person who chatters incessantly is sometimes said to ‘rabbit on’. This expression comes from mid 20th-century rhyming slang, in which rabbit and pork means ‘talk’. See also bunny