Weasel
['wiːz(ə)l] or ['wizl]
Definition
(noun.) small carnivorous mammal with short legs and elongated body and neck.
(noun.) a person who is regarded as treacherous or sneaky.
Edited by Hamilton--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) Any one of various species of small carnivores belonging to the genus Putorius, as the ermine and ferret. They have a slender, elongated body, and are noted for the quickness of their movements and for their bloodthirsty habit in destroying poultry, rats, etc. The ermine and some other species are brown in summer, and turn white in winter; others are brown at all seasons.
Checker: Myrna
Definition
n. a common carnivore belonging to the same genus as the polecat and stoat—the body long and slender—eating rats frogs birds mice &c.: (Shak.) a lean hungry fellow.—n. Wea′sel-coot the red-headed smew.—adj. Wea′sel-faced having a lean sharp face.
Checker: Witt
Unserious Contents or Definition
To see a weasel bent on a marauding expedition in your dreams, warns you to beware of the friendships of former enemies, as they will devour you at an unseemly time. If you destroy them, you will succeed in foiling deep schemes laid for your defeat.
Checker: Merle
Examples
- On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and stoat tribe--and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen. Arthur Conan Doyle. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
- Her self was all in her head, she did not know what it was spontaneously to run or move, like a fish in the water, or a weasel on the grass. D. H. Lawrence. Women in Love .
- Catch a weasel at it, and catch a Jew! Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- I observed the young animal's flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
- A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- The ermine fur, with which we are all familiar, is furnished by the stoat, a small animal of the weasel tribe. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
Typed by Hester