A variant or dialectal form of 'gnu,' referring to a large African antelope with curved horns.
From Dutch 'gnu,' borrowed from a Bantu language (possibly Xhosa 'i-nu'). The variant spelling reflects different transliteration conventions from African languages into Dutch and English during colonial trade.
The spelling 'gneu' shows how the same animal gets different names across languages—Dutch kept the 'eu' pronunciation while English standardized it to 'gnu,' reminding us that animal names are basically international telephone games played across centuries.
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