rabbit

There’s just something about the names of some of the most familiar animals. Like dog, the origin of the word rabbit is obscure. But, at least we are few hops closer to a source with rabbit than we are with dog.

Found in Middle English, rabbit originally meant “young rabbit, bunny,” and was most likely borrowed from a French word. Scholars point us to the Walloon robett and the dialectical Dutch robbe. But from there, it’s an etymological rabbit hole.

Walloon is a French dialect chiefly spoken in southern and southeastern Belgium and neighboring regions in France.

Unsure about the difference between a rabbit and a hare? We’ve got you covered!

Because they have so many natural predators, rabbits are famously skittish animals. They can rotate their ears 180 degrees and can pinpoint sounds. Rabbits even use their own “language” of subtle facial twitches and other movements to warn their kin.

The word bunny is often used as an informal synonym of rabbit, as in Bugs Bunny is a rascally rabbit—er, wascally wabbit? The word hare is also commonly used to mean a rabbit, but the two words have different origins, not to mention the fact that they are separate species.

Rabbit is used in a number of idioms and phrases that reference the critter in some way, such as rabbit ears (indoor television antennae, if you remember those) or the expression to breed like rabbits, which alludes to the animal’s proficiency in … making more rabbits.