different between lair vs habitat

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /l??/
• (US) IPA^(key): /l???/
• Rhymes: -??(?)
• Homophone: layer (one pronunciation)

Etymology 1

From Middle English leir, leire, lair, lare, from Old English le?er (“couch, bed”), from Proto-Germanic *legr?, from Proto-Indo-European *leg?-.

Noun

lair (plural lairs)

1. A place inhabited by a wild animal, often a cave or a hole in the ground.
2. A shed or shelter for domestic animals.
3. (figuratively) A place inhabited by a criminal or criminals, a superhero or a supervillain; a refuge, retreat, haven or hideaway.
   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula Chapter 21

     ...Van Helsing stood up and said, "Now, my dear friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise. Are we all armed, as we were on that night when first we visited our enemy's lair. Armed against ghostly as well as carnal attack?"

4. (Britain dialectal) A bed or resting place.
5. (Scotland) A grave; a cemetery plot. [from c. 1420]

Synonyms

• (of an animal): burrow (of some smaller mammals), den (of a lion or tiger), holt (of an otter)
• (of a criminal): den, hide-out

Derived terms

• (grave): lair-stone (“tombstone”)

Translations

Verb

lair (third-person singular simple present lairs, present participle lairing, simple past and past participle laired)

1. (Britain) To rest; to dwell.
2. (Britain) To lay down.
3. (Britain) To bury.

Etymology 2

From Old Norse leir (“clay, mud”). Compare Icelandic leir (“clay”).

Noun

lair (plural lairs)

1. (Scotland) A bog; a mire.

Verb

lair (third-person singular simple present lairs, present participle lairing, simple past and past participle laired)

1. (transitive, Scotland) To mire.
2. (intransitive, Scotland) To become mired.

Etymology 3

Backformation from lairy.

Noun

lair (plural lairs)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) A person who dresses in a showy but tasteless manner and behaves in a vulgar and conceited way; a show-off.

References

• Wright, Joseph (1902) The English Dialect Dictionary?^[3], volume 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 505–506
• “lair” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.

Anagrams

• aril, lari, liar, lira, rail, rial

Manx

Noun

lair f

1. Alternative form of laair

Scots

Etymology

From Old English l?r (“instruction”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?lair/
• Rhymes: -er

Noun

lair (plural lairs)

1. lore
   • "Ower mony a fair-farrant an rare beuk o precious lair" (second line of "The Raven" translated into Scots).

English

Etymology

From Latin habitat (“it dwells, lives”), the 3rd person singular present active indicative form of habit? (“I live or dwell”). In Linnaeus and similar authors, the geographical ranges of species were customarily denoted in Latin by a sentence beginning with "Habitat", e.g. "Habitat in Europa" ("It lives in Europe"), and it thus became the convention to refer to the geographical range as the "habitat". Compare the English derivations of exit and ignoramus from Latin finite verbs reanalyzed as English nouns.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?hæb?tæt/, [?hæb?tæ?]

Noun

habitat (countable and uncountable, plural habitats)

1. (uncountable, biology) Conditions suitable for an organism or population of organisms to live.

2. (countable, biology) A place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs.
3. (countable, biology) A terrestrial or aquatic area distinguished by geographic, abiotic and biotic features, whether entirely natural or semi-natural.
4. A place in which a person lives.

Related terms

• habitable

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “habitat”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

Anagrams

• Tabitha

Catalan

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /?.bi?tat/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /a.bi?tat/
• Rhymes: -at

Verb

habitat m (feminine habitada, masculine plural habitats, feminine plural habitades)

1. past participle of habitar

French

Pronunciation

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /a.bi.ta/
• Rhymes: -a
• Homophone: habitats

Noun

habitat m (plural habitats)

1. habitat

Further reading

• “habitat” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Latin

Verb

habitat

1. third-person singular present active indicative of habit?

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Latin habitatus, from habitare

Noun

habitat n (definite singular habitatet, indefinite plural habitat or habitater, definite plural habitata or habitatene)

1. a habitat

References

• “habitat” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Latin habitatus, from habitare

Noun

habitat n (definite singular habitatet, indefinite plural habitat, definite plural habitata)

1. a habitat

References

• “habitat” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Portuguese

Noun

habitat m (plural habitats)

1. (biology) habitat (natural conditions in which a plant or animal lives)

Romanian

Etymology

From French habitat.

Noun

habitat n (plural habitate)

1. habitat

Declension

Serbo-Croatian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /xab?ta?t/
• Hyphenation: ha?bi?tat

Noun

habìt?t m (Cyrillic spelling ????????)

1. habitat