A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
marmot
A marmot is a large burrowing ground squirrel of mountains and open country across the northern hemisphere, weighing up to fifteen pounds. It hibernates deeply and for a long time, in some species eight months of the year, living entirely on fat laid down in a short summer. It whistles a sharp alarm call that carries across a basin, which is why several species are called whistlers or whistle pigs.
Etymology
The word came into English from French, and behind the French is a phrase in a Romance dialect of the Alps meaning mountain mouse. English speakers who called an American species a woodchuck were using a different word entirely, from an Algonquian name that had nothing to do with wood or chucking, and which English reshaped into two familiar words that happened to fit.
Notes
Alpine marmots hibernate as a family group in one chamber, huddled together, with the young in the middle where it is warmest. Body temperature drops to a few degrees above freezing and the heart rate falls to a handful of beats a minute, and they rouse briefly every couple of weeks. Groundhog Day is a marmot.