vole
pronunciation
How to pronounce vole in British English:
UK [vəʊl]
How to pronounce vole in American English:
US [voʊl]
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- Noun:
- any of various small mouselike rodents of the family Cricetidae (especially of genus Microtus) having a stout short-tailed body and inconspicuous ears and inhabiting fields or meadows
Word Origin
- vole
- vole: [19] A vole is etymologically a ‘fieldmouse’. The word is short for an earlier volemouse, which is assumed to have been borrowed from an unrecorded Norwegian compound *vollmus. The first element of this, voll ‘field’, was descended from Old Norse völlr ‘field’, which in turn went back to prehistoric Germanic *walthus (source also of English weald [OE] and wold [OE] and German wald ‘forest’). It may be related ultimately to wild. The second element, mus, is the same word as English mouse.=> weald, wold
- vole (n.)
- 1828, short for vole-mouse (1805, in an Orkneys book), literally "field-mouse," with first element probably from Old Norse völlr "field," from Proto-Germanic *walthuz (cognates: Icelandic völlr, Swedish vall "field," Old English weald; see wold).
Example
- 1. But the hormones are exactly the same in a human and a vole and the evolutionary benefits align .
- 2. A courageous vole takes on a coyote a hundred times his size in yellowstone national park , wyoming .
- 3. Biologists will thus be able to test theories about how behaviour is governed by the vole 's various genes .
- 4. In particular , crisp is convinced that the behaviour of naked vole rats , meerkats or even bees can shed a great deal of light on corporate life .
- 5. To scientists , it is not only ponderable but increasingly open to scrutiny-the more so now that zoe donaldson and her colleagues at emory university in atlanta , georgia , have succeeded in creating a new kind of transgenic prairie vole .