Indri
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A mostly Muslim ethnic group of Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan. plural, plural-only
- 2 One of the largest living lemurs (Indri indri), native to Madagascar.
"Indri, the ſecond new genus, conſiſts at preſent but of two ſpecies, the Linnæan lemur indri and the laniger; the former of which is lemur brevicaudatus of Geoffroy [i.e., Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire]; and the latter indri longicaudatus of the ſame author."
- 3 large short-tailed lemur of Madagascar having thick silky fur in black and white and fawn wordnet
- 1 Their Ubangian language.
Example
More examples"Indri, the ſecond new genus, conſiſts at preſent but of two ſpecies, the Linnæan lemur indri and the laniger; the former of which is lemur brevicaudatus of Geoffroy [i.e., Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire]; and the latter indri longicaudatus of the ſame author."
Etymology
Possibly from Malagasy endrina (“the lemur Indri indri”). A common explanation asserts that the word comes from the Malagasy indry (pronounced /ˈiɳɖʐʲ/) meaning “lo!” or “behold!”, or from indry izy (“There he is!”), which guides shouted to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat (1748–1814) upon seeing the animal, and which Sonnerat mistook for its name, but it has been suggested that Sonnerat studied indris too closely for this story to be plausible.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.