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rabbit
[ rab-it ]
noun
- any of several soft-furred, large-eared, rodentlike burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae, allied with the hares and pikas in the order Lagomorpha, having a divided upper lip and long hind legs, usually smaller than the hares and mainly distinguished from them by bearing blind and furless young in nests rather than fully developed young in the open.
- any of various small hares.
- the fur of a rabbit or hare, often processed to imitate another fur.
- a runner in a distance race whose goal is chiefly to set a fast pace, either to exhaust a particular rival so that a teammate can win or to help another entrant break a record; pacesetter.
- British Informal. a person who is poor at sports, especially golf, tennis, or cricket.
rabbit
/ ˈræbɪt /
noun
- any of various common gregarious burrowing leporid mammals, esp Oryctolagus cuniculus of Europe and North Africa and the cottontail of America. They are closely related and similar to hares but are smaller and have shorter ears
- the fur of such an animal
- informal.a novice or poor performer at a game or sport
verb
- intr to hunt or shoot rabbits
- informal.intr; often foll by on or away to talk inconsequentially; chatter
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Other Words From
- rabbit·like rabbit·y adjective
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Word History and Origins
Origin of rabbit1
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Word History and Origins
Origin of rabbit1
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Idioms and Phrases
- pull a rabbit out of the hat, to find or obtain a sudden solution to a problem:
Unless somebody pulls a rabbit out of the hat by next week, we'll be bankrupt.
More idioms and phrases containing rabbit
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Example Sentences
If you trap a rabbit, you can tell whether it’s male or female.
“Downtown Chicago has an overabundance of rabbits,” says Gehrt.
Before coyotes moved in, human trappers had to work to keep rabbit populations under control.
In the 1990s, a team led by José Manuel Sánchez-Vizcaíno, a veterinarian then at the Animal Health Research Center in Madrid, created a recombinant live vaccine to protect rabbits from a lethal hemorrhagic disease.
If she successfully does, this might seem like a good indication that she understands what a rabbit is.
With Big Eyes a lot of people, myself included, were glad to see you emerge from the rabbit hole that is the CG world.
He eventually brings his wife and children over, and later he manages a hen and rabbit farm.
As the creator of Roger Rabbit, he eventually partnered with Walt Disney Pictures for a blockbuster animation film.
He weighed only 185 pounds, but he had killer instincts and rabbit quickness and the stamina of a mule.
Because when my rabbit died he was like, “Want a new rabbit?”
Why he did that, instead of walking around on the shore, Jimmy Rabbit couldn't understand.
"Farmer Green sometimes places scarecrows in the cornfield," Jimmy Rabbit remarked.
She opened her mouth wide showing ten yellow teeth and squealed like a rabbit!
No wonder that Lussigny, when insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in the garden.
So Henry walked briskly through the woods, feeling sure that the noise in the night had been made by a rabbit.
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More About Rabbit
Where does rabbit come from?
There’s just something about the names of some of the most familiar animals. Like dog, the origin of the word rabbit is obscure. But, at least we are few hops closer to a source with rabbit than we are with dog.
Found in Middle English, rabbit originally meant “young rabbit, bunny,” and was most likely borrowed from a French word. Scholars point us to the Walloon robett and the dialectical Dutch robbe. But from there, it’s an etymological rabbit hole.
Walloon is a French dialect chiefly spoken in southern and southeastern Belgium and neighboring regions in France.
Unsure about the difference between a rabbit and a hare? We’ve got you covered!
Did you know … ?
Because they have so many natural predators, rabbits are famously skittish animals. They can rotate their ears 180 degrees and can pinpoint sounds. Rabbits even use their own “language” of subtle facial twitches and other movements to warn their kin.
The word bunny is often used as an informal synonym of rabbit, as in Bugs Bunny is a rascally rabbit—er, wascally wabbit? The word hare is also commonly used to mean a rabbit, but the two words have different origins, not to mention the fact that they are separate species.
Rabbit is used in a number of idioms and phrases that reference the critter in some way, such as rabbit ears (indoor television antennae, if you remember those) or the expression to breed like rabbits, which alludes to the animal’s proficiency in … making more rabbits.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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