WEASEL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does weasel mean? 

• WEASEL (noun)
  The noun WEASEL has 2 senses:

1. a person who is regarded as treacherous or sneaky

2. small carnivorous mammal with short legs and elongated body and neck

  Familiarity information: WEASEL used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WEASEL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who is regarded as treacherous or sneaky

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("weasel" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Small carnivorous mammal with short legs and elongated body and neck

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("weasel" is a kind of...):

mustelid; musteline; musteline mammal (fissiped fur-bearing carnivorous mammals)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "weasel"):

ermine; Mustela erminea; shorttail weasel (mustelid of northern hemisphere in its white winter coat)

Mustela rixosa; New World least weasel (of Canada and northeastern United States)

Mustela nivalis; Old World least weasel (of Europe)

long-tailed weasel; longtail weasel; Mustela frenata (the common American weasel distinguished by large size and black-tipped tail)

muishond (southern African weasel)

Holonyms ("weasel" is a member of...):

genus Mustela; Mustela (type genus of the family Mustelidae: minks and weasels)

 Context examples 

It was on this adventure that he found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it that the young weasel went the way of its mother.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I observed the young animal’s flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In a recent paper Mills asks how evolution has shaped the coat color trait for multiple species around the world, from hares to weasels to arctic fox.

(Twenty-one species adapted to disappear in the snow. Then, the snow disappeared, National Science Foundation)

On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and stoat tribe—and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mary had shewn herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when Mary began to complain of it, and lament her being ill-used, according to custom, in being on the hedge side, while Anne was never incommoded on the other, he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel which he had a momentary glance of, and they could hardly get him along at all.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel's teeth.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

For snowshoe hares and 20 other species across the northern hemisphere, the white winter coats that once rendered them nearly invisible to predators now make them conspicuous to lynx, foxes, weasels and hawks.

(Twenty-one species adapted to disappear in the snow. Then, the snow disappeared, National Science Foundation)

He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavours to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or bite him, as I myself have sometimes done with a weasel in England.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf's throat, missing, but getting a hold on the jaw instead.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The Houyhnhnms keep the Yahoos for present use in huts not far from the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or sometimes catch weasels and luhimuhs (a sort of wild rat), which they greedily devour.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)