reindeer

Wikispecies

From Middle English reyndere, reynder, rayne-dere, from Old Norse hreindýri (“reindeer”), from hreinn (“reindeer”) + dýr (“animal”). Compare Dutch rendier (“reindeer”), German Rentier (“reindeer”), Swedish rendjur (“reindeer”), Danish rensdyr (“reindeer”). Related also to displaced Old English hrān (“reindeer”). Unrelated to rein.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹeɪndɪə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹeɪndɪɹ/

• Audio (General American):

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• Rhymes: -eɪndɪə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: rein‧deer

reindeer (plural reindeer or reindeers)

1. (plural: reindeer) Any Arctic and subarctic-dwelling deer of the species Rangifer tarandus, with a number of subspecies.

   Santa Claus' sleigh is supposedly pulled by eight reindeer

   • 1768, D[aniel] Fenning, “LAPLAND”, in The Royal English Dictionary; or, A Treasury of the English Language, 3rd improved edition, London: Printed for R. Baldwin, Hawes and Co., T. Caslon, S. Crowder, J. Johnson, Wilson and Fell, Robinson and Roberts, and B. Collins, →OCLC:

     Here is a prodigious number of wild beaſts, as ſtags, bears, wolves, foxes of various colours, martens, hares, glittens, beavers, otters, elk, and rein deer: the latter is leſs than a stag.

   • 1832, Charles Lyell, chapter VI, in Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, volume II, London: John Murray, →OCLC, page 94:

     The rein-deer, which in Scandinavia can scarcely exist to the south of the sixty-fifth parallel, descends, in consequence of the greater coldness of the climate, to the fiftieth degree, in Chinese Tartary, and often roves into a country of more southern latitude than any part of England.

   • 2013 March, Nancy Langston, “Mining the Boreal North”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 101, number 2, archived from the original on 13 April 2016, page 98:

     Reindeer are well suited to the taiga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a thermogradient between body core and the environment of up to 100 degrees, in part because of insulation provided by their fur, and in part because of counter-current vascular heat exchange systems in their legs and nasal passages.

2. (plural: reindeers, biology) Any species, subspecies, ecotype, or other scientific grouping of such animals.

• caribou

reindeer (third-person singular simple present reindeers, present participle reindeering, simple past and past participle reindeered)

1. To herd or farm reindeer

• reindeer on Wikipedia.Wikipedia