badger

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

• noun Any of several carnivorous burrowing mammals of the family Mustelidae, such as Meles meles of Eurasia or Taxidea taxus of North America, having short legs, long claws on the front feet, and a heavy grizzled coat.
• noun The fur or hair of any of these mammals.
• noun Any of several similar mammals, such as the ratel.
• transitive verb To ask or nag (someone) about something in an annoying and persistent way; pester: synonym: harass.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun One who buys corn and other provisions to sell them elsewhere; a hawker; a huckster; a cadger.
• noun A badgeman; one entitled or required by law to wear a badge, as the police, licensed porters, and others.
• noun An erroneous translation, in the English version of the Bible, of the Hebrew tahash, an animal whose skins are mentioned 13 times in the Old Testament as coverings for the ark of the covenant, the table of showbread, and the tabernacle itself, and once (in Ezek. xvi. 10) as a material for the shoes or sandals worn by women.
• noun In Australia, the bandicoot, Perameles, and, rarely, the rock-kangaroo, Petrogale.
• noun A soldier who wears short whiskers.
• noun In angling, an artificial fly having a hackle of badger cock with a dark-brown, nearly black center and cream-colored points.
• noun A fossorial plantigrade carnivorous mammal, of the family Mustelidæ and subfamily Melinæ.
• noun An artists' brush made of badgers' hair, used for blending or causing the pigments to melt or shade into one another and for imparting smoothness. A flat brush used for removing dust from a polished surface in some photographic and other chemical operations, etc.
• noun The Lutraria vulgaris, a common conchiferous or bivalve mollusk of northern Europe. It is especially used as bait for the cod.
• noun A sobriquet of a resident of Wisconsin, called the Badger State, in allusion to the abundance of badgers in it.
• To attack, as the badger is attacked when being drawn or baited; bait; worry; pester.
• To beat down in a bargain.
• Synonyms Pester, Worry, etc. See tease.

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

• noun Now dialectic, Eng. An itinerant licensed dealer in commodities used for food; a hawker; a huckster; -- formerly applied especially to one who bought grain in one place and sold it in another.
• noun A carnivorous quadruped of the genus Meles or of an allied genus. It is a burrowing animal, with short, thick legs, and long claws on the fore feet. One species (Meles meles or Meles vulgaris), called also brock, inhabits the north of Europe and Asia; another species (Taxidea taxus or Taxidea Americana or Taxidea Labradorica) inhabits the northern parts of North America. See teledu.
• noun A brush made of badgers' hair, used by artists.
• noun (Zoöl.) See Dachshund.
• transitive verb To tease or annoy, as a badger when baited; to worry or irritate persistently.
• transitive verb To beat down; to cheapen; to barter; to bargain.

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

• noun A common name for any mammal of three subfamilies, which belong to the family Mustelidae: Melinae (Eurasian badgers), Mellivorinae (ratel or honey badger), and Taxideinae (American badger).
• noun A native or resident of the American State of Wisconsin.
• noun obsolete A brush made of badger hair.
• noun plural A crew of desperate villains who robbed near rivers, into which they threw the bodies of those they murdered.
• verb To pester, to annoy persistently.
• verb UK, informal To pass gas; to fart.
• noun obsolete An itinerant licensed dealer in commodities used for food; a hawker; a huckster; -- formerly applied especially to one who bought grain in one place and sold it in another.

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

• verb persuade through constant efforts
• noun a native or resident of Wisconsin
• verb annoy persistently
• noun sturdy carnivorous burrowing mammal with strong claws; widely distributed in the northern hemisphere