aswail

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “"Native name". Which Indian language?”)

Noun

aswail (plural not attested)

1. (dated) The sloth bear () of India.
   • Colonel Sykes

     An Aswail brought to me from the woods when quite young, and which lived some time in my possession, fed by choice almost exclusively upon roast mutton and fowl; rejecting all fruits and vegetables.

   • 1953, Dirk Pieter Erdbrink, A review of fossil and recent bears of the Old World: volume 1:

     […] mutilated parts of an Aswail from Ceylon together with parts of a three-toed Sloth […]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “aswail”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• Alawis