tatouay

English

Etymology

From a compound word in a Tupi-Guarani language (compare tatu-ai),[1][2] of which the first element is ultimately from Old Tupi tatu (“armadillo”). Compare Portuguese tatu, French tatou. The second element (ay or ai) may mean "wound" because of a belief that its fat was used on wounds,[1][2] or "colored",[3] or "worthless".[4]

Noun

tatouay (plural tatouays)

  1. An armadillo (Cabassous tatouay), native to tropical South America; the broad-banded armadillo.

Further reading

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “tatouay”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Webster's Secondary-School Dictionary (1913)
  3. ^ Rubén Bareiro Saguier, León Cadogan, Literatura guaraní del Paraguay (1980, →ISBN), page 28
  4. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (1998, →ISBN)
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.