puma

Etymology

It is borrowed from Spanish puma,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} from Quechua puma.^{[2][3][4][5][8][9]} Barnhart and Etymonline place the Quechua word in Peru, among the Incas.^[4][3] The Spanish word is recorded in 1602, in a passage that was translated into English in 1688.^[2] French, Italian and German took the word from Spanish as well: puma (1633), puma (1769) and Puma (18th century).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The large American wild cat: 1771, in Thomas Pennant's Synopsis of Quadrupeds.^[2][6] The older OED dated it to 1777,^[10] the date that Etymonline and Barnhart give, in William Robertson's History of America.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its one meaning, the cougar or mountain lion, and the animal's fur or pelt.^[2][6] Darwin, in the narrative of the Beagle voyage (1839), used it for the animal's flesh eaten as food, a sense the OED marks as rare and obsolete.^[2]

Timeline

• 1771 – the American wild cat.^[2][6] Etymonline and Barnhart date it to 1777.^[3][4]
• 1839 – the flesh of the puma as food, in Darwin (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large wild cat of the Americas, with a plain tawny to greyish coat, found from Canada to Patagonia; the cougar or mountain lion.^[11][6][2]
2. The fur or pelt of this animal.^[6]

Usage notes

Collins, Merriam-Webster and the OED give cougar and mountain lion as other names for the animal, and the Shorter Oxford adds panther.^{[11][6][2][5]}

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins