ferret
Pluralferrets
Verbferrets, ferreting, ferreted
Pluralferrets
Formsferrets, ferreting, ferreted
- 1A small domesticated mammal related to the weasel, descended from the polecat and often trained to hunt rabbits and other burrowing animals.
The hunter sent a ferret down the rabbit hole to flush out the prey.
Ferrets sleep for much of the day and become active around dusk.
Note
The animal at the root of every other sense here, and its name carries a verdict. Through Old French furet and Vulgar Latin *furittum, 'weasel, ferret', it goes back to Latin fūr, 'thief'. Its working life as a hunter gave the word its later meanings: the verb of hunting with ferrets, and by extension the persistent searcher who drives hidden things into the open.
- 2To discover something hidden by searching persistently, most often expressed as to ferret out.
Auditors ferret out small errors buried deep in the company accounts.
Reporters spent months trying to ferret out who leaked the documents.
Similaruncover, unearth, root, sniff
Note
Out is the usual partner, as when Poe has a man trying to 'ferret out the assassins', but the verb also works without it. Virginia Woolf's 'She ferreted in her bag' simply means she rummaged. In Henry V, Shakespeare writes 'I'll ferret him', and Dickens has a man 'ferreted up and down'. In both, the meaning is hunted and harried. The forms ferreted and ferreting keep a single t.
- 3To hunt rabbits or other game by releasing trained ferrets into their burrows to drive the animals out.
Local farmers ferret for rabbits to keep the warren from spreading.
The men went ferreting across the hills at dawn.
- 4A person who searches relentlessly and uncovers things others have missed or hidden.
The journalist earned a reputation as a ferret who could find any buried record.
Tax inspectors are ferrets by trade, sniffing out every hidden penny.
Similarsleuth, bloodhound, investigator
Note
A compliment with teeth. The image is the animal sent down a burrow, and it praises persistence more than charm. It pairs naturally with an adjective naming the hunting ground: Charles Nicholl, writing in the London Review of Books in 1998, calls the scholar Antonio Bertoletti 'a tenacious archival ferret.' It suits researchers, auditors and investigators, whose work is turning up what others missed.
- 5A black-footed North American mammal of the weasel family (Mustela nigripes), once nearly extinct and now the focus of careful recovery programs.
Reintroduction programs have slowly returned the ferret to grasslands where it had been declared extinct.
Each ferret in the recovery program is monitored closely for signs of disease.
Less common meaning
- 6A narrow woven tape of silk, cotton, or ribbon, used to tie up documents or clothing, or to bind the edge of a fabric.
The clerk bound each file with a strip of black ferret before shelving it.
red tape and green ferret
1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak HouseNote
A different word that happens to share the spelling. This ferret comes from Italian fioretto, not from the Latin 'thief' behind the animal. It belongs to an older world of tied bundles and finished hems. Dickens sets it beside its better-known cousin in Bleak House: 'red tape and green ferret.' In present-day writing, tape or ribbon is the everyday word.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English furet, from Old French furet, from Vulgar Latin *furittum ("weasel, ferret"), a diminutive of Latin fūr ("thief").
From Italian fioretto.