Pallas's cat
- noun
- /ˈpæləs kæt/
- Specialized
:
gato de Pallas
- The thick fur of the Pallas's cat helps it survive in cold mountain climates.
Examples
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Wildlife photographers often travel to Mongolia to capture images of the elusive Pallas's cat.
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A Pallas's cat was spotted hiding among the rocks in the Gobi Desert.
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The Pallas's cat is known for its distinctive appearance.
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Have you ever seen a Pallas's cat in the wild?
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A Pallas's cat was spotted hiding among the rocks in the Gobi Desert.
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The thick fur of the Pallas's cat helps it survive in cold mountain climates.
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Wildlife photographers often travel to Mongolia to capture images of the elusive Pallas's cat.
Synonyms
A small wild cat with very thick fur that lives in the mountains of Siberia, Tibet, and Mongolia
A small wild cat with very thick fur and a stocky body that lives in cold mountains
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
Pallas's + cat
The structure 'Pallas's cat' is a possessive/eponymous construction, so a B1 learner who knows 'cat' and recognizes the possessive would infer it denotes a kind or group of cat associated with the name Pallas (i.e., a type of cat). However, the specific sense — that it is a small wildcat native to Central Asia with particular physical traits — is not predictable from the constituents alone, so the meaning is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Pallas's cat comes from the scientist Peter Simon Pallas, who first found and wrote about this small wildcat in Central Asia in the 1700s. Because people 'named it after' him, the name remembers the scientist who first found the cat.