chinchilla

American  

[chin-chil-uh] / tʃɪnˈtʃɪl ə /

noun

chinchillas plural

1. a small, South American rodent, Chinchilla laniger, raised for its soft, silvery gray fur: now rare in the wild.

2. the fur of this animal.

3. something, as a coat or jacket, made of chinchilla fur.

   a floor-length chinchilla.

4. a thick, napped, woolen fabric for coats.

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chinchilla British  

/ tʃɪnˈtʃɪlə /

noun

1. 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

2. the highly valued fur of this animal

3. any of several long-tailed rodents of the genus Lagidium, having coarse poor quality fur

4. a breed of rabbit with soft silver-grey fur

5. a thick napped woollen cloth used for coats

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• chinchillas
  plural

Etymology

Origin of chinchilla

1595–1605; < Spanish, perhaps, equivalent to chinche chinch + -illa < Latin -illa diminutive suffix

Example Sentences

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

It was a deserved lead for the league leaders, who had already fired warnings through a Davidson header and a Priscilla Chinchilla shot wide.

From BBC • May 11, 2023

She had held the same position in the 2011-2014 government of former President Laura Chinchilla, known for having been hard on crime.

From Reuters • May 11, 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

One day a Chinchilla came to live in the neighbourhood, under the charge of an elderly spinster, and the two cats met at a garden wall party.

From Novel Notes by Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)