ferret

UK/ˈfɛɹɪt/US/ˈfɛɹɪt/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,609 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: ferrets

A ferret is a small tame animal used to hunt rabbits. Keep ferrets, send the ferret down, a working ferret.

It is a domesticated polecat and has been kept for two thousand years, which makes it one of the older tame animals. Sent into a burrow, it drives rabbits out into nets. To ferret something out means to search until you find it. The Latin means little thief.

Definitions of ferret

1nounferretA small tame animal used to hunt rabbits.B2+
“The farmer sent his ferret down the hole to chase out the rabbits.”

ferret is an animal.

Where it comes from

Old French furet comes from Latin fur, a thief, by way of a word meaning little thief.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰer-
Latin
fūr — thief
Vulgar Latin
*furittum — weasel, ferret
Old French
furet
Middle English
furet
English, today
ferret

From Middle English furet, ferret, from Old French furet, from Vulgar Latin furittum (“weasel, ferret”), diminutive of Latin fūr (“thief”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

ferret in the wild

Physically, ferrets resemble other mustelids because of their long, slender bodies.
Ferret
Contemporary scholarship agrees that ferrets were bred for sport, hunting rabbits in a practice known as rabbiting.
Ferret
The black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), also known as the American polecat or prairie dog hunter, is a mustelid species native to central North America.
Black-footed ferret
The black-footed ferret declined throughout the 20th century, primarily as a result of decreases in prairie dog populations and sylvatic plague.
Black-footed ferret
Stink badgers are smaller still, and ferret-badgers are the smallest of all.
Badger

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

ferret out

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