coyote

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kɔɪˈəʊt/, /kɔɪˈəʊtɪ/ (UK); /kəˈjoʊ.ti/, /kaɪˈoʊ.ti/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Spanish coyote, a Mexican Spanish word,^[2][3][4][5] from Nahuatl coyōtl.^[2][3][4][5] Random House records earlier English forms cuiota and cayota.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first named the prairie wolf of western North America, the name used in Mexico and later in the United States.^[6][3]

Semantic evolution

In American slang it came to mean a contemptible, especially dishonest, person,^[5] and later a person who smuggles migrants across the Mexican border into the United States for a fee.^[4][5][1] In Native American legend the coyote is a trickster and culture hero.^[5][1]

Timeline

• a1628 – OED’s first quotation.^[6]
• 1759 – first date given by Etymonline and Merriam-Webster.^[3][4]
• 1850 – attributive uses such as coyote diggings in Californian mining.^[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A small wolflike wild dog (Canis latrans) of North America.
2. A person who smuggles migrants across the border into the United States.
3. A firefighter sent to fight remote, severe forest fires for days at a time.

Word family

• coydog
• Coyote State

Related words

• coyotillo

References

1. [1] [2] [3] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. [1] [2] [3] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press