puma

Returning to our irregular series of English words from Indigenous languages of the Americas, let’s move on to South America, starting with Quechua, a language family spoken in the high Andes of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and bits of adjoining territory. Classical Quechua (KEHTCH-wah) was the language of the Incas, but Quechuan languages had spread widely well before that empire and are still spoken today by an estimated 8 to 10 million people. The Spaniards (surprisingly) allowed speaking Quechua to continue until late in their empire, and more than a few words entered Spanish and thence English—enough for two weeks even sticking to common words, so let’s get started with one that surprised me:


puma (POO-muh, PYOO-muh) - n., a large powerful American wild cat (Puma concolor, formerly Felis concolor) with an unmarked tawny body and a long tail; the pelt of a puma; (slang) a woman in her 20s or 30s who seeks relationships with younger men.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

In the first sense, also called cougar, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount, and panther (and one of those will come up again in a future week), while in the third sense, younger than a cougar. Locally the preferred name is mountain lion [Sidebar: yes, watching out for them is part of trail safety, and no, I've never met one outside an enclosure], while panther is preferred in Florida and catamount is Appalachian -- the most common name, though, is cougar. For the record I've never heard that second pronunciation ETA here in the States -- it looks to be nearly exclusively UK. I include the older binomial name to highlight that this is the largest of the small cats, and not closely related to the large cats of genus Panthera (its nearest relative is actually the cheetah). This name entered English in the 1770s from Spanish, from Quechua puma.

---L.