cuscus

See also: Cuscus, cuscús, cúscús, and cușcuș

English

Etymology 1

Waigeou spotted cuscus (Spilocuscus papuensis)

From New Latin Cuscus, former genus name, ultimately (probably via French and Dutch koeskoes) from a local word for the marsupials in a language of the Moluccas.[1][2]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈkʌs.kəs/, /ˈkuːs.kuːs/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ʌskəs

Noun

cuscus (plural cuscuses)

  1. Any arboreal marsupial of most genera of the family Phalangeridae, native to northern Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia.
    • 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 357:
      Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, or plantains, we had very short commons, and the boisterous weather being unpropitious for fishing, we had to live on what few eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional cuscus, or eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, inhabiting the island.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

cuscus (uncountable)

  1. (India) vetiver
    Synonym: khus

References

  1. ^ “cuscus”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
  2. ^ “cuscus”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Anagrams

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