rabbit
/ˈɹæbɪt/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms rabbits rabbiting rabbitting rabbited rabbitted
- noun A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail. (Those of the larger kind are instead called hares) “The pioneers survived by eating the small game they could get: rabbits, squirrels and occasionally a raccoon.”
- noun (uncountable) The meat from this animal. “She was cooking rabbit stew for dinner.”
- noun (uncountable) The fur of a rabbit typically used to imitate another animal's fur.
- noun A runner in a distance race whose goal is mainly to set the pace, either to tire a specific rival so that a teammate can win or to help another break a record; a pacesetter.
- noun (cricket) A very poor batsman, selected as a bowler or wicket-keeper.
- noun (cricket) A batsman who is frequently dismissed by the same bowler (said to be that player's rabbit). “Glenn McGrath dismissed Michael Atherton a record 19 times; hence Atherton is McGrath's rabbit.”
- noun (computing theory) A large element at the beginning of a list of items to be bubble sorted, and thus tending to be quickly swapped into its correct position. Compare turtle.
- noun Rarebit; Welsh rabbit or a similar dish: melted cheese served atop toast.
- verb (intransitive) To hunt rabbits.
- verb (US, intransitive) To flee. “The informant seemed skittish, as if he was about to rabbit.”
- verb (UK, intransitive) To talk incessantly and in a childish manner; to babble annoyingly. “Stop your infernal rabbiting! Use proper words or nobody will listen to you!”
- verb Confound; damn; drat.
- proper noun The fourth of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.
Synonyms
walking wicket bunny bunny rabbit coney cony run off scamper bolt rabbit on blather prattle babble lapin hare
Etymology
Inherited 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.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “rabbit”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details