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rodent

rodent

117 2.8
A small animal like a mouse or rat that uses strong front teeth to chew
  • noun
  • /ˈroʊdənt/
translation icon : roedor
  • The researchers are currently conducting studies on rodents to get some preliminary answers.
  • small rodents
  • rodents as pets
  • wild rodents

But that's so monkeys can get it from rodents just like humans can.

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Examples

  • The owl, a nocturnal creature, is best known for his wisdom and eating up small rodents.

  • It's some sort of rodent, apparently.

  • It is the second largest rodent in the world.

  • These first mammals were small, they were rodents, but they were capable of a new type of thinking.

  • So Prairie dogs are rodents that live all over America.

  • They have those awesome teeth and most rodents eat similar types of food.

  • This makes them easy prey, so these infected rodents get eaten and pass the parasite on.

  • At these two locations, we captured eight species of rodents that included 178 animals (Table 2).

    Academic text (2015)
  • The squirrel is a common type of rodent found in parks and forests.

  • After setting traps, they caught several rodents in their attic.

Synonyms

gnawer
vsrodent
1 8.1

A small mammal like a mouse or beaver with front teeth for biting hard things

is the scientific term for that specific taxonomic group

Compounds

Small dry pieces of poop made by mice or rats

Surface Forms

rodent singular
rodents plural

Morphology

rodent = rod + ent

Formed from a Latin root meaning 'to gnaw' plus the Latin suffix '-ent'; these elements are not productive or semantically transparent to average learners, so the meaning cannot be reliably derived from the parts.

Etymology

Rodent comes from the old Latin verb rodere, which means 'to gnaw' or 'to bite', and you can see the same idea in the word erode ('to wear away'). So a rodent is a 'gnawing' animal, which fits mice, rats, squirrels and other small mammals that chew with strong front teeth.