bandicoot

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “bandicoot rat image”)

Ultimately from Telugu పందికొక్కు (pandikokku), from పంది (pandi, “pig, boar”) +‎ కొక్కు (kokku, “bandicoot”); first used of Asian murids, now called bandicoot rats, thence applied to the Australian marsupials which bear some resemblance.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbændɪˌkuːt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈbændiˌkut/

bandicoot (plural bandicoots)

1. Any of various small marsupials of Australia and New Guinea, some with distinctive long snouts, of the family Peramelidae.
2. A bandicoot rat; any of the genera Bandicota and Nesokia of rat-like rodents of southeast Asia.

bandicoot (third-person singular simple present bandicoots, present participle bandicooting, simple past and past participle bandicooted)

1. (Australia, informal) To steal growing root vegetables from a garden by digging the vegetable out but leaving the tops undisturbed.

• bandicoot on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “bandicoot”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “bandicoot, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020., “bandicoot”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022..

Unadapted borrowing from English bandicoot, in turn borrowed from Telugu పందికొక్కు (pandikokku).

bandicoot m (plural bandicoots)

1. bandicoot (small Australian marsupial of the family Peramelidae)