porcupine
Americannoun
-
porcupines
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of porcupine
1375–1425; late Middle English porcupyne, variant of porcapyne; replacing porke despyne < Middle French porc d'espine thorny pig. See pork, spine
Explanation
A porcupine is a prickly rodent, a round forest animal that's covered in sharp, protective quills. How do you pet a porcupine? Very, very carefully. Porcupine comes from Latin roots, porcus, "pig," and spina, "spine or quill." Fittingly, a regional name for the porcupine is "quill pig." The porcupine is famous for its spines, which become spikier when it's afraid or angry. Less well known is the fact that porcupines also clatter their teeth loudly as a warning — all the more reason for your dog to feel embarrassed after she ends up with a nose full of porcupine quills.
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:
Uniforms that sprouts porcupine quills at the tug of a collar?
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2026
The next day I got up and went over to get in the shower and there was a porcupine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 6, 2026
A bloodied but determined honey badger pursues a Cape porcupine in Botswana.
From BBC ● Feb. 4, 2025
A new study published in the journal Current Biology claims to have reconciled the dispute, thanks to an exceptionally rare, nearly complete porcupine skeleton discovered in Florida.
From Science Daily ● May 28, 2024
It might have been a dog, or a raccoon, or an opossum, or a skunk, or a porcupine, or it might have been something more dangerous.
From "Typical American" by Gish Jen
They lack the adorable charisma of chinchillas, porcupines, moles or rats, though.
From Salon ● May 11, 2025
Raccoon dogs, masked palm civets, hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines have transmitted bat coronaviruses before, the study authors noted.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2024
Other animals identified as a potential source of the pandemic were the masked palm civet, which was also associated with the Sars outbreak in 2003, as well as hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2024
During her court case with PETA, Haddix declared that she makes approximately $80,000 per year selling creatures like caracal wildcats, Asian small-clawed otters, Egyptian fruit bats and African crested porcupines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2024
But the Terrible Things covered them with the curl of their terrible nets and the porcupines hung in them like flies in a spider's web as the Terrible Things carried them away.
From "Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust" by Eve Bunting
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.
