Other forms: rabbits
A rabbit is a jumping animal with long ears. A wild rabbit, keep rabbits, a rabbit hole.
Rabbits live in warrens, breed extraordinarily fast and were introduced to Britain by the Normans as a food animal. They are not rodents but lagomorphs, which is a separate order. Note breed like rabbits; pull a rabbit out of a hat; and going down a rabbit hole, from Alice, which now means following a subject far further than intended.
1nounrabbitA jumping animal with long ears.
“The rabbit hopped across the lawn and disappeared into the bushes.”
rabbit is an animal.
Also accepted in games: bunny
Middle English rabet probably came from a dialect form of Old French, from a Middle Dutch word. The adult was originally a coney, and rabbit meant the young one.
Middle Dutch
robbe
vls
robbe — rabbit, seal
Old French
rabotte
Latin
rabettus
Middle English
rabet
English, today
rabbit
Built from
Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch - or vls robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of unknown origin; possibly some imitative of the sound verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal. See rub. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (“baby rabbit”) and in French rabot (“plane”)), coming via wa - Old French - (reflected nowadays as wa robète (“rabbit”)), from Middle Dutch robbe "rabbit; seal"; whence Modern Dutch rob (“rabbit", also "seal”); also Middle Low German robbe, rubbe (“rabbit”), and the later German Low German Rubbe, Robb (“seal”), West Frisian robbe (“seal”), stq Rubbe (“seal”), frr rob (“seal”), borrowed into German Robbe (“seal”). Meant "young rabbit" until the 19th c., when it came to replace the original general term cony, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny, "vulva" (compare ass and donkey).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA