The fur or hide of a beaver, used as a valuable commodity in the fur trade; a beaver skin prepared for use.
Compound of beaver and pelt (from Old Norse fell meaning 'hide' or 'skin'). Directly describes the physical object that made the beaver fur trade so economically important.
Beaver pelts were literally the currency of North American exploration—traders exchanged them for goods, they were so valuable that the Hudson's Bay Company centered their entire business around them, and beavers were hunted almost to extinction because of human demand for fashion.
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