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Polecat   Listen
noun
Polecat  n.  (Zool.)
(a)
A small European carnivore of the Weasel family (Putorius foetidus). Its scent glands secrete a substance of an exceedingly disagreeable odor. Called also fitchet, foulmart, and European ferret.
(b)
The zorilla. The name is also applied to other allied species.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Polecat" Quotes from Famous Books



... detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish-register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... people have a notion that we have, in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on; but farther inquiry may ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... her nose down, now gathered up on the top of a dyke, and with erect ears, looking across the wild like a moss-trooper out on business, keen and fell. She could do everything it became a dog to do, from killing an otter or a polecat, to watching and playing with a baby, and was as docile to her master as she was surly to all else. She was not quarrelsome, but "being in," she would have pleased Polonius as much, as in being "ware of entrance." She was never beaten, and she ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... shakes my Heart,—handsom! alas, no, dread Sir; what shou'd such a deform'd Polecat as I do with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... can like such misshapen, idiotic-looking, selfish, useless brutes; and, by George, it smells like a polecat—curse it! but some people have deuced queer fancies in more matters than one. The brute! on my soul, I'd like ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... hour, however, when my p'sition in the van of Kaintucky ton comes within a ace of bein' ser'ously shook. It's on my way to school one dewy mornin' when I gets involved all inadvertent in a onhappy rupture with a polecat. I never does know how the misonderstandin' starts. After all, the seeds of said dispoote is by no means important; it's enough to say that polecat ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... ribbon with a heavy silver medal suspended from either end (one presented to his father by George III, and the other to himself by the Prince of Wales). Then fastening on his right wrist an armlet made of polecat skins, he stepped on to the platform, and apologizing, for the lack of a portion of his costume, on account of the excessive heat, proceeded in highly poetic strains, and with a fervid, impassioned manner, to which no description could do justice, to picture the glory of the rising sun, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... vultures. In riding back in the morning we came across a very fresh track of a Puma, but did not succeed in finding it. We saw also a couple of Zorillos, or skunks, — odious animals, which are far from uncommon. In general appearance, the Zorillo resembles a polecat, but it is rather larger, and much thicker in proportion. Conscious of its power, it roams by day about the open plain, and fears neither dog nor man. If a dog is urged to the attack, its courage is instantly checked by ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... of the inevitable betel-nut quid, and have offered a drink of sugarcane brew or other beverage to the household, and have discussed a few topics of daily life—it may be about the last wild boar killed, or the capture of a polecat in the snares[1]—the prologue begins. This lasts from one to two days, including often the better part of the nights. Each of the visitors comes in his turn and rattles off, with many a significant haw and cough, in good Manbo style a series of periphrastic platitudes ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... Wood Machinery A Nine-inside Coach Human Polecat Breakfast and Cigar versus Foetor Ferry Crossing—Travelling Beasts Old Bell's and Old Bell Cross Country Drive—Scenery The Mammoth Cave Old Bell and the Mail Pleasant Companions Rural Lavatory Fat Boy and Circus Intelligence LOUISVILLE and Advice Ohio—A ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... endless patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his remaining energy, and in which he was to do better work for science than ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... of apples, bacon, onions, and mutton, and at the bottom of each a squab, or young cormorant, which diffused both through the pie and through the ambient air a delicate odor of mingled guano and polecat. And the occasion was worthy alike of the smell and of the noise; for King Alef, finding that after the Ogre's death the neighboring kings were but too ready to make reprisals on him for his champion's murders and robberies, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Indians, to a man by the name of Guardine or Sardine (probably the latter), in the show business. The Indians were invoiced as Sage Brush Jimmy, Boiling Hurricane, Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, Joe, Hairy Grasshopper and Dead Polecat. Child known as White Kitten. Receipt for Indians was signed by Mr. Hi. Samuels, who is still in the circus business, and whom I happen to be selling out at this moment, at suit of McCullum & Montmorency, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... camp at New Castle ferry we crossed the Pamunkey, marched between Aylett's and Dunkirk on the Mattapony River, and on the 8th of June encamped at Polecat Station. The next day we resumed the march along the North Anna—our advance guard skirmishing with a few mounted men of the enemy, who proved to be irregulars—and bivouacked on Northeast Creek, near Young's Mills. This day I learned from some ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... into his relentless heart to buy poison, in order with it to kill his two companions. And straightway he went on into the town to an apothecary, and besought him to sell him some poison for destroying some rats which infested his house and a polecat which, he said, had made away with his capons. And the apothecary said: "Thou shalt have something of which (so may God save my soul!) no creature in all the world could swallow a single grain without losing his life thereby—and that in less time than thou wouldest ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... letter to Mr Bedford, Jan. 27, 1823. Snivel was a dog belonging to Mr B. in early days. "We had an adventure this morning, which, if poor Snivel had been living, would have set up her bristles in great style. A foumart was caught in the back kitchen; you may perhaps know it better by the name of polecat. It is the first I ever saw or smelt; and certainly it was in high odour. Poor Snivel! I still have the hairs which we cut from her tail thirty years ago; and if it were the fashion for men to wear lockets, in a locket they should be worn, for I never had a greater ...
— Heads and Tales • Various



Words linked to "Polecat" :   Mustela putorius, Spilogale putorius, foumart, polecat weed, Conepatus leuconotus, mustelid, Mephitis mephitis, wood pussy, fitch, little spotted skunk, foulmart, Mephitis macroura, badger skunk, striped skunk, skunk



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