Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Squirrel
/ˈskwɜːrəl/noun
A bushy-tailed tree-dwelling rodent.
The Greek roots
σκιά
skiá
shadow, shade
οὐρά
ourá
tail
Literally: “shadow tail”
The story of the word
σκίουρος is usually read as shadow tail, the animal that sits in the shade of its own tail, though some scholars suspect that reading was invented later to make sense of an older, opaque word. Latin took it as sciurus, French wore it down to escurel, and it arrived in English with the Normans. Old English had its own name for the animal, ácweorna, and lost it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
A squirrel had been in the loft insulation all winter.