comadreja

Spanish

Etymology

From comadre (“midwife; godmother”) +‎ -eja (diminutive suffix), said to be after its sinuous and nimble (and therefore “feminine”) figure. Compare equivalents in other Romance languages (Italian donnola, Portuguese doninha, Galician doniña, Romanian nevăstuică) but not only (Greek νυφίτσα (nyfítsa), Danish brud, Arabic اِبْن عِرْس (ibn ʕirs)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /komaˈdɾexa/ [ko.maˈð̞ɾe.xa]

• Audio (Spain):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -exa
• Syllabification: co‧ma‧dre‧ja

Noun

comadreja f (plural comadrejas)

1. weasel (a mammal of the genus Mustela)

   Synonyms: comadreja común, comadreja menor

2. marten
3. (Rioplatense, Paraguay) opossum, possum (especially the white-eared opossum Didelphis Albiventris)

   Synonyms: zarigüeya, comadreja overa

Derived terms

• comadreja colorada
• comadreja picaza
• comadreja siberiana

Further reading

• “comadreja”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10
• comadreja on the Spanish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^es