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jackal

UK/ˈd͡ʒækəl/US/ˈd͡ʒækəl/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,714 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: jackals

A jackal is a wild dog that hunts and scavenges. A golden jackal, jackals circling, the jackal's call.

It pairs for life and both parents raise the young, which is unusual among dogs. The reputation for cowardly scavenging is unfair — they hunt as much as they scavenge. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, was pictured with a jackal's head.

Steve Garvie from Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of jackal

  1. 1nounjackalA wild dog that hunts and scavenges.B2+

    “At night we heard jackals howling at the edge of the village.”

jackal is an animal.

Where it comes from

French chacal comes through Turkish and Persian from Sanskrit shrgala, the name of the animal.

  1. Sanskrit

    शृगाल — jackal

  2. fa-cls

    شغال

  3. ota

    چقال

  4. Turkish

    çakal

  5. French

    chacal

  6. English, today

    jackal

French chacal, chacale, checale, schakal, ciacale, from Turkish çakal, from ota چقال, from fa-cls شغال, borrowed from Sanskrit शृगाल (“jackal”), the alternative form of सृगाल.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

jackal in the wild

  • The African golden wolf (Canis lupaster) was also formerly considered a jackal.

    Jackal

  • The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), also called the red jackal, the Simien jackal or Simien fox, is a canine native to the Ethiopian Highlands, including the Simien Mountains.

    Ethiopian wolf

  • The black-backed jackal (Lupulella mesomelas) is a medium-sized canine native to eastern and southern Africa.

    Black-backed jackal

  • The black-backed jackal has a wide array of food sources, feeding on small to medium-sized animals, as well as plant matter and human refuse.

    Black-backed jackal

  • The golden jackal (Canis aureus), also called the common jackal, is a wolf-like canid that is native to Eurasia.

    Golden jackal

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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.