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reindeer - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

a reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)

From Middle English reyndere, reynder, rayne-dere, from Old Norse hreindýri (“reindeer”), from hreinn (“reindeer”) + dýr (“animal”). Compare Dutch rendier (“reindeer”), German Rentier (“reindeer”), Swedish rendjur (“reindeer”), Danish rensdyr (“reindeer”) and French renne (“reindeer”). Related also to displaced Old English hrān (“reindeer”). Unrelated to rein.

reindeer (plural reindeer or reindeers)

  1. (plural: reindeer) Any Arctic and subarctic-dwelling deer of the species Rangifer tarandus, with a number of subspecies.

    Santa Claus' sleigh is supposedly pulled by nine reindeer

    • 1768, D[aniel] Fenning, “LAPLAND”, in The Royal English Dictionary; or, A Treasury of the English Language, 3rd improved edition, London: Printed for R. Baldwin, Hawes and Co., T. Caslon, S. Crowder, J. Johnson, Wilson and Fell, Robinson and Roberts, and B. Collins, →OCLC:

      Here is a prodigious number of wild beaſts, as ſtags, bears, wolves, foxes of various colours, martens, hares, glittens, beavers, otters, elk, and rein deer: the latter is leſs than a stag.

    • 1832, Charles Lyell, chapter VI, in Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, volume II, London: John Murray, →OCLC, page 94:

      The rein-deer, which in Scandinavia can scarcely exist to the south of the sixty-fifth parallel, descends, in consequence of the greater coldness of the climate, to the fiftieth degree, in Chinese Tartary, and often roves into a country of more southern latitude than any part of England.

    • 1958 December, M. D. Greville and H. A. Vallance, “Sweden's Inland Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 829:

      Herds of wandering reindeer are frequently seen, and may even hold up the train while they cross the unfenced line to reach their feeding grounds.

    • 2013 March, Nancy Langston, “Mining the Boreal North”, in American Scientist‎[1], volume 101, number 2, archived from the original on 13 April 2016, page 98:

      Reindeer are well suited to the taiga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a thermogradient between body core and the environment of up to 100 degrees, in part because of insulation provided by their fur, and in part because of counter-current vascular heat exchange systems in their legs and nasal passages.

  2. (plural: reindeers, biology) Any species, subspecies, ecotype, or other scientific grouping of such animals.

Rangifer tarandus

reindeer (third-person singular simple present reindeers, present participle reindeering, simple past and past participle reindeered)

  1. To herd or farm reindeer