jackal

English borrowed jackal from French chacal (also spelled chacale, checale, schakal, ciacale), which came from Turkish çakal, itself from Ottoman Turkish چقال (çakâl). That word traces back to Classical Persian شغال (šaġāl), borrowed from Sanskrit शृगाल (śṛgāla), an alternative form of सृगाल (sṛgāla).

The word simply named the animal at every stage — a jackal in Sanskrit, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Turkish, and French all point to the same creature, with no recorded shift in meaning along the way.

The many French spellings (chacal, chacale, checale, schakal, ciacale) show scribes and speakers wrestling to capture a foreign sound before English settled on jackal; no other English cognate is given in the facts.