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Theme week! -- I've got a bunch o' beasties coming up in the queue, so let's bunch them up and make a run of them, starting with:
sewellel (suh-WEL-uhl) - n., a small burrowing rodent (Aplodontia rufa) of the Pacific coastal region of North America.
More commonly called mountain beaver (even though they're actually more closely related to squirrels), and also called boomer. The name entered English in 1806 from Lower Chinook š-walál, a robe made of mountain beaver skins -- and therein lies a tale: when Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) heard the word, he misunderstood it as referring to the mountain beaver itself, and transcribed it as sewellel. The animal in Chinook is ug̣wulal, and the robe name is dual form, š-walál.
(I'm having trouble finding a good-quality photo that it's not of a dead one, so here's a painting:)
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
sewellel (suh-WEL-uhl) - n., a small burrowing rodent (Aplodontia rufa) of the Pacific coastal region of North America.
More commonly called mountain beaver (even though they're actually more closely related to squirrels), and also called boomer. The name entered English in 1806 from Lower Chinook š-walál, a robe made of mountain beaver skins -- and therein lies a tale: when Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) heard the word, he misunderstood it as referring to the mountain beaver itself, and transcribed it as sewellel. The animal in Chinook is ug̣wulal, and the robe name is dual form, š-walál.
(I'm having trouble finding a good-quality photo that it's not of a dead one, so here's a painting:)
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
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