stoat
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of stoat
1425–75; late Middle English stote < ?
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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.
See Examples For:
This makes it yet another introduced species like the rat or stoat, with unpredictable behavior.
From Slate ● Aug. 8, 2025
Look very closely - can you see the stoat?
From BBC ● Feb. 4, 2025
On one predator-free island—home to threatened species such as a flightless parrot called the kakapo—the government spent some $295,000 over eight months tracking down a single stoat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 5, 2024
Decked out at one point in a velvet blazer and turtleneck, hair teased into the likeness of a dead stoat, Robey is less demented sadist than disco king.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2023
He extended a yellow-gray finger, pointing directly at Pantalaimon, whose red-brown stoat form immediately became ermine white.
From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman
As a journalist and a volunteer, I’ve set and checked traps called “Trapinators” and “Mammalian Corrections Units” with Predator Free Dunedin, a conservation collective that has battled possums, rats, hedgehogs, and stoats since 2018.
From Slate ● Aug. 8, 2025
Kiwi chicks are likely to be eaten by stoats without some form of predator control.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 5, 2024
Starting in the 1800s, millions were slaughtered by nonnative predators like stoats, a mammal related to the weasel.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2023
On the brink of extinction from imported predators, a few last kākāpō were evacuated to three tiny islets around New Zealand to live free from pests like cats and stoats.
From National Geographic ● Oct. 4, 2023
Many were sparrows, shrews and woodland defenders, but they were far outnumbered by the slain rats, ferrets, weasels and stoats.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
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.
