otter
Pluralotters, otter
- 1A meat-eating mammal of the weasel family that lives in or near water, with webbed feet and dense, water-repellent fur.
The otter dove beneath the surface and came up moments later with a fish in its paws.
Along the rocky coast, otters hunt crabs and sea urchins in the shallows.
Note
At bottom the name is a description. Old English otor goes back to an Indo-European word for a water animal, built on a root meaning "water". The plural is normally otters, though otter itself can also serve as the plural. The fur on a hat and the slang label for a slim, hairy man both branch from this animal.
- 2The dense fur or the flesh of the river-dwelling mammal, used historically for garments, trim, and trade.
The hat was trimmed with glossy otter from the northern rivers.
Traders prized otter above most other furs in the eighteenth century.
Note
Fur and meat are treated as a mass, with no article and no plural, the way traders speak of a harvest. Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) has the Aleuts arrive "to take otter," meaning pelts as a commodity rather than particular animals. A collar or trim is likewise made of otter, not of otters.
- 3In gay male slang, a hairy man with a slender build, as distinct from a bear, who is heavier and more thickset.
Most of his friends were otters, lean and bearded rather than burly.
She described her brother as an otter, slim with plenty of chest hair.
Note
Gay slang that sorts men by body type, and otter only makes sense beside bear. Both are hairy, but the otter is slim where the bear is thickset. It works as an ordinary countable noun (he's an otter, a room full of otters). It belongs to informal talk, not neutral description. The image borrows the lean, sleek look of the animal.
Less common meanings
- 4A reddish-orange or yellow dye obtained from the pulp around the seeds of the achiote tree, used to color food and fabric.
Weavers steeped the wool in otter to achieve a deep orange hue.
The merchant's ledger listed barrels of otter shipped from the colonies.
Note
A different word altogether that happens to share the spelling. It is a corruption of annatto, the dye's usual name, and has nothing to do with the animal. The form is obsolete, so a reader meets it only in older texts. In modern writing the dye is always annatto. An otter listed among dyestuffs is the colorant, not the fur.
- 5Archaic form of attar.
The bride was perfumed with otter of roses on her wedding day.
Merchants traded in precious otter distilled from fresh petals.
Note
Perfumers' otter is attar, the essential oil extracted from flowers, in an older spelling. William Jones's A Grammar of the Persian Language (1809) speaks of "the precious perfume called otter of roses." That phrase is the one to recognize: today it is attar of roses. Like the obsolete name for annatto, this otter is unrelated to the animal.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English "oter," from Old English "otor," from Proto-Germanic "*utraz" and ultimately the Proto-Indo-European root "*wed-" (water). It is cognate with Dutch "otter," German "Otter," Swedish "utter," Sanskrit "udrá," and Ancient Greek "húdra" (water snake), and is a doublet of "hydra."
A corruption of "annotto."