Fitchews

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Small musky carnivorous mammals of the weasel family, related to the polecat and once hunted for their fur
2. Foul-smelling members of the weasel family, known in older English writing as polecats or ferret-like animals
3. Slender, musk-scented weasel-family animals that were named in old English texts and valued for their pelts

Etymology: "Fitchews" is simply the plural of "fitchew," and the singular is the more interesting word. It names the polecat, a small weasel-like animal known for its foul smell. The name came into English from Old French, where forms such as "fichau" and "fissel" were used for the animal, and those in turn were borrowed from Middle Dutch "vitsche" and "visse," also meaning polecat. The trail goes back further, to Latin "vissiō," meaning "stench." The animal was named for the reek it gave off, so the word is essentially a description of its smell that became the animal's name. The French word "vison," meaning mink, comes from the same ancestry, another small musky mustelid. Middle English speakers mistook the form "fitchewes" for a plural, which is why the singular "fitchew" is the form that came to be re-derived from it, and "fitchews" now appears as the regular plural in modern dictionaries.

Synonyms: polecat, fitch, foulmart