bunny
/ˈbʌni
/- Easter bunnies, mad March hares and a tonne of daffodils, chicks and eggs all of them made an appearance on this year's traditional Easter bonnets.
- No sooner had Beccy and I finished our meals, mum popped her head around the door, and with an evil little smile exclaimed ‘Ha, ha, you two just ate a bunny rabbit’.
- Born in Manchester, she started her working life as a bunny girl, went on to run pubs and spent nine years training with leading American relationships expert Chuck Spezzano, author of If It Hurts, It Isn't Love.
- Not being on hand to inject a little passion or enthusiasm into her girl, the performance is left entirely up to Diane - and, dressed like a bunny girl in a wine bar at lunchtime, she's already way out of her comfort zone.
- It's a commonplace that actors are dumb bunnies when they start talking about politics.
- So, like the brave little bunny I am, I took the day off and have mainly spent it vegetating and feeling sick.
- If I've got 20-30 pages open, which is by no means unusual, then I'm going to be a deeply sad bunny if they all just vanish with a thud.
- Coles would have appeared, or did someone think it was worth getting the bunnies at Coles Myer all panicked by introducing Newbridge into the equation?
- And, of course no more bunnies like Fosters with assets to sell.
Origin
Early 17th century (originally used as a term of endearment to a person, later as a pet name for a rabbit): from dialect bun 'squirrel, rabbit', also used as a term of endearment, of unknown origin. sense 2 dates from the early 20th century.
The first recorded example of bunny, in 1606, reads, ‘Sweet Peg…my honey, my bunny, my duck, my dear’. The word was originally a term of endearment for a person, and was not found as a pet name for a rabbit until late in the 17th century. It is itself a pet form of bun, a dialect word for a squirrel or a rabbit. The origin of that word is not known, but it is unlikely to be connected with bun ‘a small cake’, which is also of obscure origin. The 1987 film Fatal Attraction, in which Glenn Close's character, rejected by Michael Douglas, boils his child's pet rabbit, gave us the term bunny boiler for a woman who acts vengefully after having been spurned by her lover.