rabbit – English noun declension

English noun forms of rabbit

Noun: rabbit
Singularrabbit
Pluralrabbits

Sample Sentences

  • The pioneers survived by eating the small game they could get: rabbits, squirrels and occasionally a raccoon.
  • Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead; you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill. [1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], “The Old Punt: A Curious ‘Turnpike’”, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 19–20:]
  • She was cooking rabbit stew for dinner.
  • Glenn McGrath dismissed Michael Atherton a record 19 times; hence Atherton is McGrath's rabbit.
  • The cheese mixture may be served with toast on the side or poured on top of toast and grilled until golden brown and bubbling. Other variations include Buck rabbit, a Welsh rabbit with a poached egg on top, and Yorkshire rabbit with bacon ... [2018, Helen Saberi, Teatimes: A World Tour, Reaktion Books, →ISBN:]
  • CHEESE TOASTED, OR RABBIT. [1858, Mrs. N. K. M. Lee, The American Family Cook Book, page 47:]
  • Hannah Glasse offered recipes for Scotch, Welsh, and English rabbit. This is her Scotch rabbit: Toast a piece of bread very nicely […] Cut a slice of cheese, […] [2019, Mark Kurlansky, Milk: A 10,000-Year History, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:]
  • This rabbit is constructed such that only that fraction of the beam that passes through the 15g-in. diameter target container reaches the Faraday cup behind the rabbit. [2012, Joseph Cerny, Nuclear Spectroscopy and Reactions 40-A (part 1, page 249)]
  • Rabbits come in many forms/In colors, shapes and sizes./ They satisfy a lady's needs,/Indulging her sweet vices. [2013 07, larry morgan, FOOTSTEPS: Poetic Reflections on the Opposite Sex and Life's Other Contradictions., iUniverse, →ISBN, page 37:]
  • First, she showed us the standard dildos before moving on to the rabbits—vibrators with little ears to stimulate the clit. [2018 August 29, Vivienne Savage, A Man of Many Talons, Payne & Taylor:]
  • She reached into her night stand for some lubricant and her rabbit vibrator. [2023 June 6, Madeline Cox, 250 Sexy Erotic Stories: Age Gap, Taboo Dark Reverse Harem, Forbidden Naughty Family, Tales for Adults, BDSM, Rough Daddies Dom, Sexy Hot Story for Women and Men, PaperGram LLC, →ISBN:]

Etymology

1. Inherited from Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (“rabbit, seal”), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (“to rub”) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal. See rub.
2. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (“baby rabbit”) and in French rabot (“plane”)), coming via Walloon Old French (reflected nowadays as Walloon 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”), Saterland Frisian Rubbe (“seal”), North Frisian rob (“seal”), borrowed into German Robbe (“seal”).
3. 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).
4. Note that there is no inherited Germanic word for rabbits, since hares are the only leporids native to Britain (as with all of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France); rabbits were introduced from France in the late Middle Ages, likely after the Norman Invasion. (Fittingly, hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic.) See: Middle English Nouns 'rabet', Middle English Nouns 'rabet', Latin Nouns 'rabettus', French Nouns 'rabot', Dutch Nouns 'rob', German Nouns 'Robbe'.

Verbs referencing "rabbit"

Dutch Nouns rob, German Nouns Robbe, Swedish Nouns rabbis, French Nouns rabot, Icelandic Nouns rabítur.