panda

Meaning

1. (archaic) The red panda (Ailurus fulgens), a small raccoon-like animal of northeast Asia with reddish fur and a long, ringed tail.
2. (abbreviation, also, alt-of, attributive, colloquial, ellipsis) Ellipsis of giant panda (“Ailuropoda melanoleuca”).
3. (British, abbreviation, alt-of, colloquial, ellipsis) Ellipsis of panda car (“a black-and-white police car”).

Synonyms

giant panda

panda bear

coon bear

red panda

lesser panda

Ailurus fulgens

bear cat

cat bear

Ailuropoda melanoleuca

herd of cattle

bearcat

crowd

Translations

panda

panda

Panda

panda

panda

panda

pandabeer

Ailuropoda melanoleuca

باندا

panda gigante

panda

ours panda

Verbrecherbande

Viehherde

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈpændə/

Etymology

Cognate with Tibetan: ཕོ་ཉ

In summary

Borrowed from French panda, of unclear ultimate origin but probably from the second element of nigálya-pónya, a local name for the red panda recorded in Nepal and Sikkim by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800 or 1801 – 1894), an ethnologist, naturalist and the British Resident of Nepal, possibly from Nepali निँगाले (nĩgāle, “relating to a certain species of bamboo”) (the adjectival form of निँगालो (nĩgālo), a variant of निङालो (niṅālo, “Drepanostachyum intermedium, a species of bamboo”)) + a regional Tibetan name for the animal (compare regional Tibetan ཕོ་ཉ (pho nya, “messenger”)).
Attributive uses of sense 2 (“giant panda”) generally refer to that animal’s distinctive black and white coat colour.