ferret
Pluralferrets
Verbferrets, ferreting, ferreted
Pluralferrets
Formsferrets, ferreting, ferreted
- 1A small furry animal like a weasel that people keep as a pet or use to hunt rabbits.
Like a long, thin animal that loves to squeeze into tight spaces.
Their pet ferret likes to hide socks under the couch.
A ferret can squeeze through very small gaps and tight spaces.
Note
- 2
- 3To hunt rabbits by sending ferrets into their holes to chase them out.
Like sending a small helper into a tunnel to chase something out the other end.
On cold mornings they would ferret along the hedgerows for rabbits.
His grandfather taught him to ferret when he was a boy.
- 4A person who is very good at finding hidden things.
Like a friend who can always find the one thing everyone else has lost.
The new clerk is a real ferret when it comes to lost files.
As a ferret for facts, she never stops digging until she has the answer.
Similarsleuth, bloodhound, investigator
Note
- 5A wild North American animal of the weasel family, with black feet, that almost died out completely.
Like a wild cousin of the pet kind, living out on the open grasslands.
Conservationists tracked a wild ferret across the prairie, one of only a few hundred left.
The endangered ferret depends almost entirely on prairie dogs for its food.
Less common meaning
- 6A narrow strip of silk, cotton, or ribbon used to tie up papers or clothes, or to cover the edge of cloth.
Like a shoelace used to tie a stack of papers shut.
She tied the bundle of letters with a red ferret.
red tape and green ferret
1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak HouseHere, ferret means a narrow woven tape used to tie up papers.Note
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
It came through Old French from a Latin word meaning "thief," because the animal was seen as a little thief.
It comes from the Italian word fioretto.