Bison

How to spell bison

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bison

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bison mean?

1. nounA large, shaggy, hump-shouldered wild ox native to North America and parts of Europe.

Bison in a sentence

• A herd of bison grazed across the open prairie.

• The reserve protects the last wild bison in the region.

Where does bison come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Bison comes directly from the Latin bison, the Romans' name for the wild ox of the northern forests. The Latin word was itself borrowed from a Germanic source, related to the Old English wisend and the Old High German wisunt, which described the European wild ox we now call the wisent. The root is thought to carry a sense connected to the strong, musky smell of the animal. The word passed into Greek as bison as well, and English took it up in its Latin form during the early 1600s. When Europeans reached North America they applied the familiar name bison to the large shaggy plains animal, even though it is often loosely called a buffalo; the spelling has stayed faithful to its Latin shape ever since.

How the word is built

• bison (whole-word borrowing; no separable prefix or suffix)