A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
pug
To pug is to leave a footprint in soft ground, and a pug is the print itself. In tracking, it usually appears as pugmark, and in that form it is the standard term across South Asia for the print of a large cat. The word is also used in agriculture for the damage stock do to wet ground by treading it, and in pottery for working clay to an even consistency.
Etymology
The tracking sense came into English from Hindi through British India. The other senses appear to be a separate and older English word of uncertain origin meaning to work or knead something soft, which is the pottery use. The small dog is a third word entirely, and the moth called a pug is a fourth.