Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various primates of the family Lorisidae of sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia, having a very short or absent tail, and including the pottos.
  • noun Any of several small, slow-moving nocturnal members of this family in the genera Loris and Nycticebus of tropical Asia, having dense woolly fur and large eyes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The slender lemur of Ceylon, Arachnocebus or Loris gracilis, a prosimian mammal of the family Lemuridæ and subfamily Nycticebinæ: more fully called slender loris. Also lori; pl. loris.
  • noun [capitalized] The typical genus of Lorisinæ, based by Geoffroy on the slender lori or loris of Ceylon, and the same as Arachmocebus of Lesson; extended to include the slow lemur, which is more frequently referred to a genus Nycticebus, Stenops, or Bradylemur.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of small lemurs of the genus Stenops. They have long, slender limbs and large eyes, and are arboreal in their habits. The slender loris (Stenops gracilis), of Ceylon, in one of the best known species.

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

  • noun Any of several small, slow-moving primates, of the family Lorisidae, found in India and southeast Asia.

Etymologies

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

[French, possibly from obsolete Dutch loeris, simpleton, from loer, from Old French lourt, from Latin lūridus, pale; see lurid.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French loris, reportedly from obsolete Dutch loeris.

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  • Thanks for posting this on galoot's profile, Pro.

    June 20, 2008