chinchilla
Americannoun
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a small, South American rodent, Chinchilla laniger, raised for its soft, silvery gray fur: now rare in the wild.
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the fur of this animal.
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something, as a coat or jacket, made of chinchilla fur.
a floor-length chinchilla.
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a thick, napped, woolen fabric for coats.
noun
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a small gregarious hystricomorph rodent, Chinchilla laniger, inhabiting mountainous regions of South America: family Chinchillidae. It has a stocky body and is bred in captivity for its soft silvery grey fur
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the highly valued fur of this animal
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any of several long-tailed rodents of the genus Lagidium, having coarse poor quality fur
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a breed of rabbit with soft silver-grey fur
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a thick napped woollen cloth used for coats
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of chinchilla
1595–1605; < Spanish, perhaps, equivalent to chinche chinch + -illa < Latin -illa diminutive suffix
Vocabulary lists containing chinchilla
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Rather he and his twin brother John, growing up in the small rural town of Chinchilla, Australia, “were constantly doing things with our hands.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 6, 2024
In May, Chaves named as security minister Zamora, who also held the post under the 2010-2014 presidency of Laura Chinchilla, and has a reputation for being tough on crime.
From Reuters • Jul. 19, 2023
Generative AI, in the form of image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, and text generators like Bard, ChatGPT, Chinchilla and LLaMA, has exploded in the public sphere.
From Salon • Apr. 6, 2023
Louis Yeung, owner of the Chinchilla & Pets Shop in Hong Kong, said he had handed over 22 hamsters to be culled by the authorities last year.
From BBC • Jan. 5, 2023
When their soft purr-r-r-r, purr-r-r-r had first changed into sleepy little snores, and then died away altogether, Mrs. Chinchilla jumped down out of the window, and went for her morning airing in the back yard.
From The Story Hour by Smith, Nora Archibald
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
