tortie
8.0
Having mixed black and orange patches of fur
- adjective
- /ˈtɔrti/
:
tortuga
- The tortie cat lounged on the windowsill, displaying her beautiful mottled fur.
Examples
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A friend and her neighbors have been working with a tortie Mama Kitty who appeared in their neighborhood and gave birth to two black kittens, one of whom appears above.
Blog text (3) -
She adopted a tortie who had striking patches of black, orange, and brown fur.
-
The local shelter had several tortie kittens that quickly stole everyone's hearts.
Surface Forms
Morphology
tortie = tortoiseshell (transparent) = tortoiseshell + ie
Colloquial clipped/diminutive formation from 'tortoiseshell' whose meaning (the coat pattern) is directly preserved in 'tortie'.
Etymology
The word tortie comes from tortoiseshell, which means 'like a tortoise's shell' and describes a 'mix of black, brown and orange patches', so to be tortie is to have that same patchy coat.
