Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various small arboreal marsupials of the family Phalangeridae of New Guinea, Australia, and adjacent islands, having a long tail and dense woolly fur.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A marsupial mammal of the genus Phalanger or Phalangista, or of the subfamily Phalangistinæ; a phalangist: so named by Buffon (in the case of a species of Cuscus) from the peculiar structure of the second and third digits of the hind feet, which are webbed together.
- noun [capitalized] [NL.] A genus of phalangers founded by Storr in 1780. The name is prior in date to Phalangista, but until lately has been less used.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) Any marsupial belonging to Phalangista, Cuscus, Petaurus, and other genera of the family
Phalangistidæ . They are arboreal, and the species of Petaurus are furnished with lateral parachutes. See Flying phalanger, underflying .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An
arboreal marsupial of the family Phalangeridae, native toAustralia .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun small furry Australian arboreal marsupials having long usually prehensile tails
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It was a female, and though not exactly of the same species, much resembled the remarkable animal which Mons. de Buffon hath described by the name of phalanger.
Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, Performed by Captain James Cook 2003
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It was a female, and though not exactly of the same species, much resembled the remarkable animal which Mons. de Buffon hath described by the name of phalanger.
Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, Performed by Captain James Cook 2003
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The one is distinctly a true squirrel, a rodent of the rodents, externally adapted to an arboreal existence; the other is equally a true phalanger, a marsupial of the marsupials, which has independently undergone on his own account very much the same adaptation, for very much the same reasons.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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The vulpine phalanger does duty for a fox; the fat and sleepy little dormouse phalanger takes the place of a European dormouse.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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At Rawak the phalanger and the sheepdog in a wild state were the only quadrupeds met with.
Celebrated Travels and Travellers Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century Jules Verne 1866
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Of the quadrupeds, I have already mentioned the dog, and particularly described the kangaroo, and the animal of the opossum kind, resembling the phalanger of Buffon; to which I can add only one more, resembling a pole-cat, which the natives call _Quoll_: The back is brown, spotted with white, and the belly white unmixed.
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 Robert Kerr 1784
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The inclusion of red fox and of pewee, penguin, phalarope, and phalanger raises the interesting question of how the editorial staff decided which faunal names to include.
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"There is also the flying _phalanger_," observed my friend; "an animal of the marsupial order, which is a native of Australia, and somewhat resembles the opossum.
Aventures d'un jeune naturaliste. English Lucien Biart 1863
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Names based on protrusions and appendages hawk < IE root * kap - ` to grasp '(because of its grasping talons) octopus < Greek octō, ` eight' + pous, ` foot 'phalanger < Latin phalanx ` toe bone' (because of the peculiar structure of the second and third toes on its hind feet) porcupine < Latin porcus ` pig '+ spīna ` thorn, prickle, spine' rhinoceros < Greek rhin - ` nose '+ keras ` horn' shrew < IE root * skeru - ` to cut, cutting tool '(because of its snout) squirrel < Greek skiouros ` shadow tail'
chained_bear commented on the word phalanger
"...astonished by the number of nocturnal animals he heard and occasionally saw in the faint moonlight, and they so near the settlement: phalangers, bandicoots, a koala, wombats."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 364
March 9, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word phalanger
Seen here.
August 26, 2008