Crossword clues for lemming
lemming
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lemming \Lem"ming\ (l[e^]m"m[i^]ng), n. [Nor. lemming, lemende; cf. Sw. lemel, Lapp. lummik.] (Zo["o]l.) Any one of several species of small arctic rodents of the genera Myodes and Cuniculus, resembling the meadow mice in form. They are found in both hemispheres.
Note: The common Northern European lemming ( Myodes lemmus) is remarkable for making occasional devastating migrations in enormous numbers from the mountains into the lowlands.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
small arctic rodent, c.1600, from Norwegian lemming, from Old Norse lomundr "lemming." Perhaps from Lapp luomek. Figurative sense (in reference to their mass migrations that sometimes end in plunges into the sea) is from 1958.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A small Arctic and subarctic rodent from any of six genera of similar rodents. 2 (context figuratively English) Any member of a group given to conformity or groupthink, especially a group poised to follow someone off a cliff.
WordNet
n. any of various short-tailed furry-footed rodents of circumpolar distribution
Wikipedia
A lemming is a small rodent.
Lemming or Lemmings may also refer to:
Lemming is a 2005 French psychological thriller film directed by Dominik Moll and starring André Dussollier, Charlotte Rampling, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Laurent Lucas. It was entered into the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
A lemming is a small rodent, usually found in or near the Arctic, in tundra biomes. Lemmings are subniveal animals, and together with voles and muskrats, they make up the subfamily Arvicolinae (also known as Microtinae), which forms part of the largest mammal radiation by far, the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes rats, mice, hamsters, and gerbils.
Usage examples of "lemming".
They marched up the tree trunk, out onto the limb, down the plastic wire attached to the inverted feeder jar, and then, like lemmings, they ate their way up the narrow glass spout, became stuck in the sugarwater sticki-ness, and drowned.
So after her untimely death in that lemming stampede, Galder had been left without a village witch, and the word had gone out that a replacement would be needed.
Raif recognized the pelts of lemmings, meadow voles and giant hispid rats all layered into stripes.
She had a little food and Kapu had told her that the lemmings were coming back.
Salvation Army tack, where the munchies, beer, and jug wine set out on tables kept the traffic moving, making it difficult for lemmings to coagulate into madding mini-crowds.
The owlet was starving, for there was only the bunting, when there should have been dozens of lemmings.
Wolf had discovered an abundance of small creatures, voles, lemmings, and pikas, and had gone off to hunt and explore.
Others would have us return to the tundra to die, like lemmings in the sea, or whales on the beach.
They marched up the tree trunk, out onto the limb, down the plastic wire attached to the inverted feeder jar, and then, like lemmings, they ate their way up the narrow glass spout, became stuck in the sugarwater sticki-ness, and drowned.
By the time the lemmings have made a comeback, the Arctic grasslands will also have rejuvenated, in part as a result of the many corpses left in the wake of the lemming famine.
This unique survival stratagem is so successful that their swarms are more congested than that of locusts, penguins, and lemmings combined.
When deer and lemmings are overcrowded, the result is a rise in the destabilising force which causes the adrenal glands to overwork.
Herds of elk and reindeer, ground squirrels, geese, swans, lynx, lemmings, wolves, and arctic foxes, were all jammed into a broad peninsula, pinned in on three sides by the sea, and blocked on the landward side by thickening lines of cavalry.
In this negative scenario, the boom of the 1970s will turn out to have been mainly the product of the hype surrounding the super sf movies like Star Wars and Close Encounters, plus the lemming instincts of sf editors who found themselves caught up in bidding wars.
A collared lemming, long white winter hair, lank but shiny, growing out through fur of summer gray that looked black, showed the bottom of its feet already covered with white fur.