mongoose
Americannoun
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a slender, ferretlike carnivore, Herpestes edwardsi, of India, that feeds on rodents, birds, and eggs, noted especially for its ability to kill cobras and other venomous snakes.
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any of several other animals of this genus or related genera.
noun
Usage
Plural word for mongoose The plural form of mongoose is mongooses (not mongeese). The plurals of some other singular words that end in -oose are also formed this way, including caboose/cabooses and papoose/papooses. The plural mongooses is confusing because the plural of goose is the irregular form geese, which derives directly from its original pluralization in Old English. However, the term mongoose only uses the standard English plural -s ending.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mongoose
1690–1700; < Marathi mangūs, variant of muṅgūs
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.
See Examples For:
However, unrestrained hunting, habitat loss and predation by the invasive mongoose left fewer than 30 in the wild by 1952.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2025
Their female generals lead troops of between 6 and 40 of these little berserker weasels into battle with a plan of attack coordinated beside grizzly mongoose war veterans.
From Salon ● Apr. 15, 2024
Instead, they clung to their version of the facts—that a talking mongoose had taken up residence in their abode and entered an unlikely friendship with them.
From National Geographic ● Sep. 19, 2023
Meerkats, slender-tailed creatures with pointy faces, are members of the mongoose family and are native to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2023
The mongoose swiped a paw through the air and the mamba lunged, striking at its paw with terrifying accuracy.
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
In our romantic life, we more closely resemble these social, close-knit mongooses than we do our primate cousins, a "league table" of monogamy compiled by scientists suggests.
From BBC ● Dec. 10, 2025
On the course, elaborate tombs of the city's past rulers poke through tangled trees that are home to peacocks, troops of monkeys and mongooses.
From Barron's ● Oct. 18, 2025
Using a decade of life-history data from a wild population of dwarf mongooses, University of Bristol researchers found that pup survival rate actually increased when the cumulative threat of conflict with rival groups was greater.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 14, 2023
This arrangement can lead to inbreeding, but female dwarf mongooses have found a simple yet clever way around this problem: look for mates in nearby groups.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 15, 2022
“The mongooses at the zoo didn’t sell. They stayed in India.”
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
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.
