kinkajou

[David L. White]

>> <kinkajou>

>> I'm pleased, but not surprised, that it's in American dictionaries, since
>> it's an American animal.  Is it still in the concise English ones, I wonder?
>> because that's what my point was.

        It is not "an American animal" in the sense of being an animal that
occurs in the territory of American English.  (It does not occur north of
southern Mexico.)  It is "an American animal" only in the sense of occurring
in the New World.  I would hope that Brits, even lexicographers, would not
be so zoologically parochial as to exclude the only English name for this
animal on such grounds.  American lexicographers do not exclude Old World
animals like lorises and lemurs, after all, on the grounds they are Old
World (thus "un-American"?) animals.  If "kinkajou" has been excluded from
some recent dictionaries, it is, I hope, on account of rarity (as a word),
not geography.

Dr. David L. White