A beast, the lusetan or ounce?
Benjamin Zimmer
bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Fri Jul 14 20:16:50 UTC 2006
On 7/14/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > What word today is lusetan, as in "the beasts of the country are
> > bears, lusetans or ounces [etc.]", from 1720?
>
> OED gives "luseran" as a variant of "lucern", an archaic term for the lynx.
So it would follow that "ounces" is a possible misprint/scanning error
for "lynces"/"linces".
--Ben Zimmer
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