Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several small striped rodents of the genus Tamias, chiefly of North America.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A name of the hackee or chipping-squirrel of the United States, Tamias striatus, and of other species of the genus Tamias (which see).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A squirrel-like animal of the genus Tamias, sometimes called the striped squirrel, chipping squirrel, ground squirrel, hackee. The common species of the United States is the Tamias striatus.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A squirrel-like rodent of the genus Tamias, native mainly to North America.
  • verb To speed up an audio recording, especially a song, to make the voices high-pitched.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a burrowing ground squirrel of western America and Asia; has cheek pouches and a light and dark stripe running down the body

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration of obsolete chitmunk, perhaps from Ojibwa ajidamoonˀ, red squirrel.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

1832; alteration (influenced by chipping squirrel) of earlier chitmunk, from older Ojibwe ačitamo˙nˀ ‘squirrels’ (modern ajidamóóg), literally ‘those who descend headlong’, from ačit- ‘headfirst, face-down’ (compare modern ajijibizo ‘he falls headfirst’, ajidagoojin ‘he hangs upside down’). The verb developed due to the high-pitched voices of the chipmunks in the film Alvin and the Chipmunks.

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