Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word 狸. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word 狸, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say 狸 in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word 狸 you have here. The definition of the word 狸 will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of狸, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
Schuessler (2007) minimally reconstructs 貍 (OC *rə) from *pʰrə ~ *pʰə-rə and proposes possible Sino-Tibetan etymology and compares it to Mrupri(“a kind of leopard”) (see also Löffler, 1966); he also sees potential cognacy with Tibetanཞི་མི(zhi mi), ཞིམ་བུ(zhim bu), ཞུམ་བུ(zhum bu) - all meaning "cat" - if those were from *ryi-mi; additionally, པི་ཤི(pi shi, “cat”) (< *zhi?) is possibly equivalent to Old Chinese dialectal forms with initial *pʰ- (e.g. 𧳏 (pī) < LHC *pʰiə < OC *pʰrə or 𧳏貍/𧳏狸 (pīlí)); in that case, the original Chinese word might have been a compound: 貔狸 "(large) cat and small cat"; even so, see 貔 (OC *bi) for possible Indic influence on Tibetan byi ~ pi (ibid.).
As with many terms that name organisms, this term is often spelled in katakana, especially in biological contexts (where katakana is customary), as タヌキ.
Cat and raccoon dog, both of them are called 野貍(yari) in Chinese; the former is called 尼古(⟨neko1⟩ → neko) while the latter is called 多〻既(⟨tatake2⟩ → tatake) in Japanese.
Tatage no fude nando iu. Tatage to wa, tanuki no ke ka. Tanuki no ji o, tatage to yomu
This is a so-called brush [made] of tatage. Tatage [spelled by the character 毛 meaning "hair"] might mean the hair of a raccoon dog. The 狸 character for "raccoon dog" is read as tatage.