panda

Etymology

It is borrowed from French panda,^[2][3][4][5] a zoological name introduced by Cuvier: the OED credits F. G. de Cuvier (1825), the American Heritage Dictionary Georges Léopold Cuvier (1825), and Barnhart dates it to 1824.^[2][4][3] The French word was apparently taken from a local name of the animal in Nepal,^{[2][3][6][5][7]} but it has not been traced in Nepali.^[2] The OED and the American Heritage Dictionary take it as probably a shortening or alteration of “nigálya-pónya”, a local name in Nepal and Sikkim recorded by B. H. Hodgson in 1847 with reference to the animal's eating bamboo.^[2][4] The first part is Nepali, a word relating to a kind of bamboo;^[2][4] the second is unexplained: the OED takes it as a regional Tibetan animal name, while the American Heritage Dictionary compares a Nepali word for "paw".^[2][4] Partridge thought it might be Tibetan,^[8] and Dictionary.com suggests a Tibeto-Burman language of the south-eastern Himalayas.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The red or lesser panda, a raccoon-like animal of the Himalayas: 1834, in H. McMurtrie's translation of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom;^[2][5] Barnhart and Etymonline date it to 1835.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The name belonged first to the red panda.^[2][6] The giant panda, described in China by the French missionary Armand David in 1869, was at first called the parti-coloured bear,^[6][3] and took the name after its relationship to the red panda was established.^[6] The OED's first record of panda for it is from 1887, in an Illinois newspaper;^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline give 1901.^[2][3][6] Hodgson and Thomas Hardwicke, who first described the red panda in 1821, at first preferred the name wah.^[2] Since the 1960s the giant panda's black-and-white markings have given the word extended uses in Britain: a panda crossing (1962), a pedestrian crossing marked with black-and-white chevrons, and a panda car (1966), a police patrol car with a broad white stripe.^[2]

Timeline

• 1824/1825 – French panda, introduced by Cuvier.^[3][2]
• 1834 – the red panda.^[2][5]
• 1869 – the giant panda is described by Armand David, as the parti-coloured bear.^[6][3]
• 1887 – the giant panda (1901 in Barnhart and Etymonline).^[2][3][6]
• 1962 – panda crossing, a kind of pedestrian crossing in Britain.^[2]
• 1966 – panda car, a British police patrol car.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large black-and-white bearlike mammal of the mountain bamboo forests of central China, which feeds mainly on bamboo shoots; the giant panda.^[5][10][2]
2. A smaller reddish-brown raccoon-like mammal of the Himalayas and eastern Asia, with a long ringed tail; the red or lesser panda.^[5][10][2]
3. (British, informal) A police patrol car; a panda car.^[2][11]

Word family

• panda car

Related words

• pundit

Usage notes

A separate word panda, recorded in English from 1905, is a Brahmin who holds the hereditary charge of a temple, ghat or place of pilgrimage; it is a borrowing from Panjabi and Hindi, from the same Sanskrit word as pundit.^[2][11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press