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prettygoodwordwoodchuck (WOOD-chuhk) - n., a stocky burrowing rodent (Marmota monax) of northern and eastern North America.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Also called groundhog and whistle-pig, the latter name being local to the Appalachian Mountains and referring to its loud warning call. TIL that marmots are actually overgrown ground-squirrels -- I knew they were rodents, but not what kind. The English name dates from around 1670, alteration by folk etymology (they do live in and next to woodlands) from an uncertain Eastern Algonquian language -- compare Narragansett ockqutchaun. [Sidebar: the English name for the wejack, a kind of martin also called a fisher, comes from either the Objiwe or Cree cognate of ockqutchaun. It is sometimes stated that woodchuck comes from a misapplication of the Cree word, but since the woodchuck form is first attested in New England, a local source is Much More Likely.]
Obligatory tongue-twister, which turns out to have identified authors.
---L.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Also called groundhog and whistle-pig, the latter name being local to the Appalachian Mountains and referring to its loud warning call. TIL that marmots are actually overgrown ground-squirrels -- I knew they were rodents, but not what kind. The English name dates from around 1670, alteration by folk etymology (they do live in and next to woodlands) from an uncertain Eastern Algonquian language -- compare Narragansett ockqutchaun. [Sidebar: the English name for the wejack, a kind of martin also called a fisher, comes from either the Objiwe or Cree cognate of ockqutchaun. It is sometimes stated that woodchuck comes from a misapplication of the Cree word, but since the woodchuck form is first attested in New England, a local source is Much More Likely.]
Obligatory tongue-twister, which turns out to have identified authors.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 04:59 pm (UTC)Woodchucks are the only lowland marmots, and the only ones without a rocky-ground habitat. They're also the largest marmots. My father hated them, because when they got in his garden, they took only one bite out of everything, instead of eating the whole thing and possibly getting full before ruining the crop.
The marmots in the Rockies are similar to their Sierra Nevada cousins.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 07:31 pm (UTC)We did have woodchuck stew a time or two.
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Date: 2025-08-21 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 10:16 pm (UTC)A lot like rabbit.
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Date: 2025-08-21 11:04 pm (UTC)I believe the groundhog’s role in weather prognostication folklore originated as a Pennsylvania Deutsch thing, transposing European Candlemas superstitions onto a New World animal?
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Date: 2025-08-22 03:40 pm (UTC)I have a vague sense you're right but I've never dived into that. Never really liked that lore in the first place. (Now woolly-bear bands, those I were totally into. I tracked every one I met, for a couple years, before finally convincing myself that the colors are indeed totally random.)
So...ockqutchaun?
Date: 2025-08-21 06:28 pm (UTC)Re: So...ockqutchaun?
Date: 2025-08-21 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 10:20 pm (UTC)Yup! It's a very North American animal.