At the beginning of the 21st Century monsters still roam the remote, and sometimes not so remote, corners of our planet. It is our job to search for them. The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is - we believe - the largest professional, scientific and full-time organisation in the world dedicated to cryptozoology - the study of unknown animals. Since 1992 the CFZ has carried out an unparalleled programme of research and investigation all over the world. Since 2009 we have been running the increasingly popular CFZ Blog Network, and although there has been an American branch of the CFZ for over ten years now, it is only now that it has a dedicated blog.

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

WHERE DOES "RABBIT" COME FROM?

One of the mysteries of the term rabbit is that nobody knows the origin of the word.  It originally meant the young of the rabbit, the adult creature being known as a coney.  In America, the term rabbit was applied, not to rabbits, but to various kinds of hare.  We can trace the word rabbit back to sundry Germanic languages which have a word robbe, but beyond that we cannot go.  We don't know the root of the word and its literal meaning.

 As for English coney, this comes from Latin cuniculus which is possibly derived from a Celtic word meaning 'little dog'.
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