A dialectal or archaic form of 'newt,' a small salamander that lives in water and on land.
From Middle English 'ewte,' which came from Old English 'efeta.' The initial 'e-' is a dialectal variant that lost a syllable, and 'newt' developed from adding the article 'an' (an ewte → a newt).
The word 'newt' itself came from 'ewte'—when people said 'an ewte,' it eventually got reanalyzed as 'a newt,' showing how adding articles can literally change the spelling of a word over centuries.
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