coyote
Americannoun
plural
coyotes,plural
coyote-
Also called prairie wolf. a buffy-gray, wolflike canid, Canis latrans, of North America, distinguished from the wolf by its relatively small size and its slender build, large ears, and narrow muzzle.
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Slang. a contemptible person, especially an avaricious or dishonest one.
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American Indian Legend. the coyote regarded as a culture hero and trickster by American Indian tribes of the West.
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Slang. a person who smuggles immigrants, especially Latin Americans, into the U.S. for a fee.
noun
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Also called: prairie wolf. a predatory canine mammal, Canis latrans, related to but smaller than the wolf, roaming the deserts and prairies of North America
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(in Native American legends of the West) a trickster and culture hero represented as a man or as an animal
Etymology
Origin of coyote
1825–35; earlier cuiota, cayota < Mexican Spanish coyote < Nahuatl coyōtl
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.
California once had specialists dedicated to resolving conflict between people and wolves, mountain lions and coyotes.
From Los Angeles Times
The coyote's presence, it added, does not affect public access to the island, which remains open to visitors.
From BBC
There are plugs of grasses and gallon pots of white sage, purple sage, California buckwheat, long-stem buckwheat, deerweed, narrow leaf milkweed and coyote bush.
From Los Angeles Times
“And there’s lots of coyote scat — they’re just marauding around. The lizards are back and some of my roses survived.”
From Los Angeles Times
Other work by Chinese researchers takes a similar approach, tweaking algorithms based on the behavior of ants, sheep, coyotes and whales to eke out theoretical improvements in the ability of unmanned systems to collaborate.
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.
