A wild cat found in Central and South America, with a reddish-brown coat and slender body.
From Tupi (a Brazilian indigenous language) 'eíra' or similar, this word entered English through Portuguese colonial contact, named after the indigenous peoples' term for the animal.
The eyra shows how English borrowed words from indigenous languages through colonial encounters—the Tupi word survived when so much else was lost, giving us a direct line to how ancient peoples named their neighbors!
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