A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
ermine
Ermine is the winter coat of the stoat, a small northern weasel that turns from brown to pure white when the days shorten, keeping only a black tip on the tail. The change is triggered by day length rather than by cold, so an animal can turn white in a year with no snow. The black tail tip stays black year-round and is thought to draw a hawk’s strike away from the body.
Etymology
The word came into English from French. Beyond that the trail splits, with one account tracing it to a word meaning the Armenian mouse and another to an older Germanic word for a weasel. It has been an English word for the fur and the animal since the Middle Ages, and in Britain the animal is a stoat when it is brown and an ermine when it is white.
Notes
In heraldry, ermine is a pattern rather than a color: a white field scattered with small black marks, which represent the black tail tips of the pelts sewn into a robe. It became a symbol of purity and rank, and the fur was legally restricted to royalty and high office in several countries.