stoat

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English stote, also stot,^[2][3] of unknown origin.^{[2][4][5][6][7][8][9]} Barnhart and Etymonline call the origin uncertain, and Etymonline notes a resemblance to Old Norse stútr (“bull”), Swedish stut (“bull”) and Danish stud (“ox”), which makes sense only if the shared notion is a male animal.^[10][11] Klein takes that link as fact, relating the word to stot in the sense "male animal, bullock" and to Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐌰𐌿𐍄𐌰𐌽 (stautan, “to push, thrust”),^[12] but the OED sees no ground for assuming a connection with the Middle English noun.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The European ermine, especially in its brown summer coat: about 1460, in Porkington MS 10.^[5] The Middle English Dictionary's first quotation, before 1475, lists "þe fulmard..þe otyr, þe stote, & þe polcate" among beasts of the stinking foot,^[2] and Barnhart gives the same date.^[10]

Semantic evolution

English came to use stoat for the animal in its brown summer coat and ermine for it in its white winter coat,^[11][8][3] though the OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also make the two words equivalent.^[5][3] Johnson (1755) needed only "a small stinking animal".^[13] In dialect the word shifted to the animal's relatives: in Suffolk, Devon and Cornwall it was the weasel, and in Suffolk, Hampshire, Somerset and Devon the polecat.^[14] From 1854, in Wiseman's Fabiola, it was used figuratively of a treacherous person,^[5][15] and later of a sexually aggressive man.^[5][16]

Timeline

• c. 1460 – the European ermine.^[5][16]
• 1854 – figuratively, a treacherous fellow.^[5]
• before 1960 – a sexually aggressive man, a lecher.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small carnivorous mammal of the weasel family (Mustela erminea), with a brown coat and a black-tipped tail, called ermine when its coat is white in winter.^{[8][15][3][5]}
2. (figurative) A treacherous person; a sexually aggressive man, a lecher.^[5][15]

Usage notes

The OED and the Shorter Oxford also have a rare tailoring verb stoat, to sew with an invisible stitch, of unknown origin; the OED first records it in 1901, in P. N. Hasluck's Tailoring, and the Shorter Oxford dates it to the late 19th century.^[5][15] In West Yorkshire dialect it meant to sew up a rent by fine drawing.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
15. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)