Coyote

How to spell coyote

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce coyote

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does coyote mean?

1. nounA wild dog-like mammal native to North and Central America, smaller than a wolf and known for its howling.

Coyote in a sentence

• A lone coyote trotted across the empty highway at dawn.

• Ranchers built a higher fence to keep the coyote away from their chickens.

Where does coyote come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

The word comes from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, where the animal was called coyotl. Spanish colonists in Mexico adopted the name as coyote, keeping the final vowel sound that English speakers later turned into a separate spoken syllable. English borrowed the Spanish form in the early nineteenth century as settlers and naturalists encountered the small wild dog of North and Central America. The spelling preserves its Spanish journey: the silent-looking 'oyo' cluster and the final 'e' both trace straight back to that Nahuatl original. The same Nahuatl word also lives on in 'coyotaje' and informally in 'coyote' as a term for a paid people-smuggler, a sense that grew from the animal's reputation for cunning.

How the word is built

• coyote (from Nahuatl coyotl, the native Mexican name for the animal); single root borrowed whole, with no English prefix or suffix