Reynard
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A fox. dialectal
- 2 a conventional name for a fox used in tales following usage in the old epic ‘Reynard the Fox’ wordnet
- 1 A male given name.
- 2 A surname originating as a patronymic.
- 3 A name in European folklore for the red fox. literary, poetic
"Reynard, in his thieving rambles, one night the summer before last visited the pleasure-gardens in Cornbury Park, and there he found and carried off a hen pheasant while sitting on her nest. The same evening a barn-door hen, with a nide of pheasants also disappeared."
- 4 A locality in the Shire of Wellington and the Shire of Mansfield, south eastern Victoria, Australia.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Reynard, in his thieving rambles, one night the summer before last visited the pleasure-gardens in Cornbury Park, and there he found and carried off a hen pheasant while sitting on her nest. The same evening a barn-door hen, with a nide of pheasants also disappeared."
Etymology
From Old French Renart (Modern renard (“fox”)), influenced by Middle Dutch Reynaerd, both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *Raginaharduz, from *raginą (“decision, advice, counsel”) + *harduz (“hard, strong”). Compare German Reinhard, Old High German Reginhart (“strong in counsel”).
From French renard.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.