tree cat
- noun
:
gato de los árboles
- In the rainforest, a curious tree cat climbed gracefully among the branches.
Examples
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In the Sumatran village where the beans are grown... ...lives a breed of wild tree cat.
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Come here, you bobtailed little tree cat.
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It was the tree cat.
Fiction book (1999) -
The tree cat is known for its excellent climbing skills and distinctive markings.
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While exploring the forest, we spotted a rare tree cat resting on a high branch.
Synonyms
1
4.2
A slow-moving animal that lives in trees in Central and South America and hangs upside down to eat leaves
1
9.1
A large dark brown North American animal that climbs trees to hunt small animals
A large reddish-brown mammal like a raccoon that lives in trees in Southeast Asia
A night animal that lives in trees in Southeast Asia and glides using a skin fold from neck to tail
A large tree squirrel from eastern North America with a bushy tail
A small animal with a bushy tail that lives mainly in trees
A squirrel that people see as a pest
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a small wild cat or similar animal that lives mainly in trees' is directly derivable from combining 'tree' and 'cat' — it denotes a cat associated with trees. Noun–noun compounding to indicate a subtype or location is cross-linguistically common and follows straightforward composition patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer this sense.
Etymology
Tree cat comes from the simple picture of a cat living in trees: imagine a small wild cat moving and hunting among the branches. That's why it means 'a small wild cat that lives mainly in trees'.