Viscacha

//vɪˈskɑt͡ʃə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any of the several South American rodents, native to the Andes Mountains, of the genera Lagidium and Lagostomus.

    "From the tenderness of its covering, it is not, though a stronger and larger animal, so able to bear the severity of winter in the Andes as the Chinchilla, though it is not so decidedly an animal of the plains as the viscacha of Paraguay."

  2. 2
    gregarious burrowing rodent larger than the chinchillas wordnet

Example

More examples

"From the tenderness of its covering, it is not, though a stronger and larger animal, so able to bear the severity of winter in the Andes as the Chinchilla, though it is not so decidedly an animal of the plains as the viscacha of Paraguay."

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish vizcacha, from Quechua wisk'acha.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.