panda

Meaning

1. The red panda (Ailurus fulgens), a small raccoon-like animal of northeast Asia with reddish fur and a long, ringed tail.
2. Ellipsis of giant panda (“Ailuropoda melanoleuca”).
3. Ellipsis of panda car (“a black-and-white police car”).
4. A brahmin who acts as the hereditary superintendent of a particular ghat or temple, and is regarded as knowledgeable in matters of genealogy and ritual.
5. A South Asian surname.

Etymology / origin

Borrowed from French panda, of unclear ultimate origin but probably from the second element of nigálya-pónya, a local name for the red panda recorded in Nepal and Sikkim by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800 or 1801 – 1894), an ethnologist, naturalist and the British Resident of Nepal, possibly from Nepali निँगाले (nĩgāle, “relating to a certain species of bamboo”) (the adjectival form of निँगालो (nĩgālo), a variant of निङालो (niṅālo, “Drepanostachyum intermedium, a species of bamboo”)) + a regional Tibetan name for the animal (compare regional Tibetan ཕོ་ཉ (pho nya, “messenger”)). Attributive uses of sense 2 (“a giant panda”) generally refer to that animal’s distinctive black and white coat colour.

Related words

Descendant words

• পাণ্ডা(Assamese) (bor)
• panda(Cebuano) (bor)
• panda(Icelandic) (bor)
• panda(Irish) (bor)
• パンダ(Japanese) (bor)
• ផេនដា(Khmer) (bor)
• 판다(Korean) (bor)
• panda(Malay) (bor)
• panda(Norman) (bor)
• پاندا(Persian) (bor)
• panda(Polish) (cog)
• panda(Tagalog) (bor)
• แพนด้า(Thai) (bor)

Sources

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