A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
pika
A pika is a small round-eared relative of rabbits and hares, about the size of a fist, living in talus slopes and rock fields high in the mountains of North America and Asia. It does not hibernate. It spends the summer cutting vegetation and stacking it under the rocks to cure, and it lives on that hay through the winter, which is why it is also called the haymaker.
Etymology
The name came into English from Russian, which had taken it from Tungus, a language of eastern Siberia. It is one of a small set of Siberian animal names that reached English by that route. The English pronunciation has split: scientists generally say PIE-kuh and the word is often heard as PEE-kuh, and both are in use.
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