Definitions

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

  • noun A long-legged African wildcat (Leptailurus serval), having a tawny coat with black spots and very large erect ears without tufts.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The African tiger-cat, Felis serval.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) An African wild cat (Felis serval) of moderate size; -- called also serval cat. It has rather long legs and a tail of moderate length. Its color is tawny, with black spots on the body and rings of black on the tail.

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

  • noun A medium-sized African wild cat. Scientific name: Leptailurus serval or Felis serval.

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

  • noun slender long-legged African wildcat having large untufted ears and tawny black-spotted coat

Etymologies

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

[French, from Portuguese (lobo) cerval, deerlike (wolf), lynx, from Late Latin cervālis, from Latin cervus, deer; see ker- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French serval, from Portuguese cerval ("Iberian lynx"), from Latin lupus ("wolf") cervarius ("pertaining to a stag") (wolf that hunts the stag), cervus ("deer, stag").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Huh. Learned this just now on www.freerice.com.

    January 11, 2008

  • Several servals

    Spotted strolling Seattle,

    Seeking savanna.

    "Spotted in Seattle -- yet another wild cat," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 26,2008.

    January 28, 2008