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petit-gris. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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French
Etymology
Compare German Grauwerk for the fur.
Pronunciation
Noun
petit-gris m (plural petits-gris)
- a Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), which in colder areas (i.e. Russia whence fur has been imported) has more gray or white fur (and therefore has also been called Sciurus cinereus)
- a gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus)
- a Siberian chipmunk (Tamias sibiricus)
- fur of any such animal
- a paintbrush from such a fur
- an escargot petit-gris, a garden snail (Cornu aspersum, syn. Helix aspersa)
- a grey knight or dirty tricholoma, a mushroom of species (Tricholoma terreum, syn. Tricholoma myomyces)
- petit-gris de Rennes, a certain cultivar of melon
- a gray feather obtained from a female ostrich under her venter
- Coordinate term: petit-noir
Derived terms
Further reading
- “petit-gris”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.
- Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (a. 1789) Oeuvres complètes de Buffon, volume 16, Paris: F.D. Pillot, published 1830 GB, pages 190 and 195, pictured between 186–187; he distinguishes from the polatouche (Pteromys volans) the fur of which however was even a century later mixed with gray squirrel to impose on the purchaser, so petit-gris could also “mean” that.
- Aydın, Erhan (2006) “Bilge kagan yazıtında geçen kök teyeŋ hayvan adı üzerine”, in Büyük Türk Dili Kurultayı Bildirileri (in Turkish), Ankara, which relates the Turkish equivalent expression for “gray squirrel” (often sloppily translated so in English and in French as “petit gris”) to the bobak marmot (Marmota bobak or Marmota bobak subsp. sibirica)
Italian
Etymology
Borrowed from French petit-gris.
Noun
petit-gris m (invariable)
- fur of the animals signified above in the French section