cougar
Americannoun
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Also called mountain lion, panther, puma. a large, tawny cat, Felis concolor, of North and South America: now greatly reduced in number and endangered in some areas.
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Informal. an older woman who seeks sexual relationships with much younger men.
He's in his twenties, but he prefers cougars in their forties and fifties to young women his own age.
noun
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another name for puma
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slang a woman in her 30s or 40s who actively pursues casual sexual relationships with young men
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cougar
First recorded in 1765–75; from French couguar, from New Latin cuguacu ara, cuguacuarana, apparently a misrepresentation of either Guarani guaçu ara or Portuguese çuçuarana, suçuarana (from Tupi susuarana )
Explanation
A cougar is a type of large cat — male cougars can reach eight feet long. You may have seen a cougar in a nature program about the animals of North and South America. A cougar is a feline, but these cats are not tame house pets — they are dangerous wild animals. Found all the way from Canada to South America, cougars are also called pumas, mountain lions, panthers, and catamounts. The word cougar is also a slang term for an older woman who dates much younger men. Even when it is meant to be a compliment, like any stereotype, cougar has the potential to offend — best to avoid.
Vocabulary lists containing cougar
English Words Derived from Indigenous Languages of the Americas
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Amazing Animals, A-Z
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Amazing Animals, List 3
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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.
During his 2005 confirmation hearings to become chief justice, Roberts described an idyllic heartland childhood lifted from a John Cougar Mellencamp song, all “endless fields” that were “punctuated by an isolated silo or a barn.”
From Slate • May 7, 2026
Binder began his doctoral work at Oregon State in 2022 after spending nearly ten years monitoring cougars in Yellowstone through the Yellowstone Cougar Project.
From Science Daily • Mar. 3, 2026
From 1982 to 1991, Mellencamp changed his stage name —from John Cougar to John Cougar Mellencamp to, finally, John Mellencamp—exactly as often as the Hoosiers managed a winning season.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 16, 2026
His neighbor on the other side, Kardos, is living with her two teenage sons in a 35-foot Cougar fifth-wheel that barely fits on her small, fenced-in front lawn.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 28, 2025
Yummy scoured the backstretch for trainers willing to put the Cougar on their horses.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
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.
