ocelot
AH-suh-lot · noun
Origin
Ocelot comes from French ocelot, a word coined by the naturalist Buffon based on Classical Nahuatl ōcēlōtl, meaning "jaguar."
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Journey
Buffon borrowed the Nahuatl word for a much larger cat and applied it to a smaller spotted feline, so the name shifted species even as it crossed languages.
Related words
Its root ōcēlōtl is the same word underlying jaguar's naming tradition, though English didn't inherit a separate cognate from it.