kinkajou

[Larry Trask]

--On Thursday, June 14, 2001 6:16 pm -0500 "David L. White"
<dlwhite at texas.net> wrote:

[on 'kinkajou']

>         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.

My recent edition of Collins, one of the best British desk dictionaries,
not only enters 'kinkajou' but gives it two senses.  Sense 1 is the Central
and South American mammal Potos flavus, also called 'honey bear' or
'potto', and related to the raccoon.  Sense 2 is as another name for the
potto, an African prosimian primate, Perodicticus potto, belonging to the
loris family.  Apparently kinkajous and pottos, in spite of their rather
distant relationship, resemble each other so strongly that English-speakers
have not hesitated to transfer the names in both directions.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)