What is "gopher"

Prairie \Prai"rie\, n. [F., an extensive meadow, OF. praerie, LL. prataria, fr. L. pratum a meadow.]

1. An extensive tract of level or rolling land, destitute of trees, covered with coarse grass, and usually characterized by a deep, fertile soil. They abound throughout the Mississippi valley, between the Alleghanies and the Rocky mountains.

   From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the northland.
   --Longfellow.

2. A meadow or tract of grass; especially, a so called natural meadow.

   Prairie chicken (Zo["o]l.), any American grouse of the genus Tympanuchus, especially Tympanuchus Americanus (formerly Tympanuchus cupido), which inhabits the prairies of the central United States. Applied also to the sharp-tailed grouse.

   Prairie clover (Bot.), any plant of the leguminous genus Petalostemon, having small rosy or white flowers in dense terminal heads or spikes. Several species occur in the prairies of the United States.

   Prairie dock (Bot.), a coarse composite plant ( Silphium terebinthaceum) with large rough leaves and yellow flowers, found in the Western prairies.

   Prairie dog (Zo["o]l.), a small American rodent ( Cynomys Ludovicianus) allied to the marmots. It inhabits the plains west of the Mississippi. The prairie dogs burrow in the ground in large warrens, and have a sharp bark like that of a dog. Called also prairie marmot.

   Prairie grouse. Same as Prairie chicken, above.

   Prairie hare (Zo["o]l.), a large long-eared Western hare ( Lepus campestris). See Jack rabbit, under 2d Jack.

   Prairie hawk, Prairie falcon (Zo["o]l.), a falcon of Western North America ( Falco Mexicanus). The upper parts are brown. The tail has transverse bands of white; the under parts, longitudinal streaks and spots of brown.

   Prairie hen. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Prairie chicken, above.

   Prairie itch (Med.), an affection of the skin attended with intense itching, which is observed in the Northern and Western United States; -- also called swamp itch, winter itch.

   Prairie marmot. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Prairie dog, above.

   Prairie mole (Zo["o]l.), a large American mole ( Scalops argentatus), native of the Western prairies.

   Prairie pigeon, Prairie plover, or Prairie snipe (Zo["o]l.), the upland plover. See Plover, n., 2.

   Prairie rattlesnake (Zo["o]l.), the massasauga.

   Prairie snake (Zo["o]l.), a large harmless American snake ( Masticophis flavigularis). It is pale yellow, tinged with brown above.

   Prairie squirrel (Zo["o]l.), any American ground squirrel of the genus Spermophilus, inhabiting prairies; -- called also gopher.

   Prairie turnip (Bot.), the edible turnip-shaped farinaceous root of a leguminous plant ( Psoralea esculenta) of the Upper Missouri region; also, the plant itself. Called also pomme blanche, and pomme de prairie.

   Prairie warbler (Zo["o]l.), a bright-colored American warbler ( Dendroica discolor). The back is olive yellow, with a group of reddish spots in the middle; the under parts and the parts around the eyes are bright yellow; the sides of the throat and spots along the sides, black; three outer tail feathers partly white.

   Prairie wolf. (Zo["o]l.) See Coyote.

1812, American English, perhaps an Englishing of Louisiana French gaufre "honeycomb, waffle," said to have been used by French settlers in reference to small mammals on analogy of the structure of their burrows, from Old French gaufre, of Frankish origin. The rodent was the nickname of people from Arkansas (1845) and later Minnesota (1872). The gopherwood tree of the Bible (used by Noah to make the ark, Gen. vi:14) is unrelated; it is from Hebrew gofer, perhaps meaning the cypress.

Etymology 1 n. 1 A small burrowing rodent, especially in the family Geomyidae. 2 The gopher tortoise Etymology 2

n. (alternative spelling of gofer English)

1. n. a zealously energetic person (especially a salesman) [syn: goffer]

2. any of various terrestrial burrowing rodents of Old and New Worlds; often destroy crops [syn: ground squirrel, spermophile]

3. burrowing rodent of the family Geomyidae having large external cheek pouches; of Central America and southwestern North America [syn: pocket gopher, pouched rat]

4. burrowing edible land tortoise of southeastern North America [syn: gopher tortoise, gopher turtle, Gopherus polypemus]

A gopher, also known as a "pocket gopher" (family Geomyidae), is a burrowing rodent native to North America and Central America.

Gopher may also refer to:

Pocket gophers, commonly referred to as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. There are approximately 35 species of gopher living in Central and North America. They are commonly known for their extensive tunneling activities. Gophers are endemic to North and Central America.

The name "pocket gopher" on its own may be used to refer to any of a number of genera within the family. These are the "true" gophers; however there are several ground squirrels in the distantly related family Sciuridae that are often called gophers as well.

The Gopher protocol is a TCP/IP application layer protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the Internet. The Gopher protocol was strongly oriented towards a menu-document design and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately HTTP became the dominant protocol. The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.

The protocol was invented by a team led by Mark P. McCahill at the University of Minnesota. It offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. Its text menu interface is well-suited to computing environments that rely heavily on remote text-oriented computer terminals, which were still common at the time of its creation in 1991, and the simplicity of its protocol facilitated a wide variety of client implementations. More recent Gopher revisions and graphical clients added support for multimedia. Gopher was preferred by many network administrators for using fewer network resources than Web services.

Gopher's hierarchical structure provided a platform for the first large-scale electronic library connections. Gopher has been described by some enthusiasts as "faster and more efficient and so much more organised" than today's Web services. The Gopher protocol is still in use by enthusiasts, and although it has been almost entirely supplanted by the Web, a small population of actively maintained servers remains.

Gopher is a fictional grey anthropomorphic gopher, character who first appeared in the 1966 Disney animated film Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, introducing himself as Samuel J. Gopher. He has a habit of whistling out his sibilant consonants, one of various traits he has in common with the beaver in Lady and the Tramp, by whom he may have been inspired. While he made appearances in most episodes of Welcome to Pooh Corner, Gopher was fleshed out a bit further in the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. He is portrayed as generally hard-working, especially in his tunnels (which he inevitably falls into at least once). He does not appear in the original books Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne until 1966 (a fact that is regularly pointed out in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, when he breaks the fourth wall by saying he's "not in the book, y'know", also trying to say that he would not be in a phone book). Gopher's voice was originally done by Howard Morris, who retired from the role and was replaced by Michael Gough.

Gopher's most recent appearances were in A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving and Winnie the Pooh: A Valentine for You. He also made minor appearances in A Very Merry Pooh Year and appeared in Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh, which was included as part of Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie. To date, this is Gopher's last appearance in the Winnie the Pooh media line.

Gopher does not appear in the 2011 film, Winnie the Pooh.

Gopher is an Atari 2600 game written by Sylvia Day and published by US Games in 1982. The player controls a farmer with a shovel who must protect his three carrots from the gopher.

An unlicensed version was released by Zellers in Canada and was called Farmer Dan. The unlicensed version was given the box art of Plaque Attack by Activision.