agouti
/əˈɡuːti/noun
agouti is a noun meaning “A rodent of the genus Dasyprocta, similar in appearance to a guinea pig but having longer legs, mainly native to Central and South America” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-G-O-U-T-I, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of agouti is agoutis.
What does agouti mean?
noun
- 1
A rodent of the genus Dasyprocta, similar in appearance to a guinea pig but having longer legs, mainly native to Central and South America.
- 2
A fur containing a pattern of pigmentation in which individual hairs have several bands of light and dark pigment with black tips; any of several genes responsible for this pigmentation.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce agouti?
- /əˈɡuːti/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-agouti.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of agouti
- agoutis plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is agouti?
Agouti appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 109,062nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Agouti in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a rodent similar in appearance to a guinea pig but having longer legs:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | agouti |
| German | Aguti |
| Portuguese | cutia |
| Spanish | agutí, añuje, cotuza, guatusa, jochi colorado, ñeque |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does agouti come from?
From French agouti, from Old Tupi akuti. The name of the acouchi is probably from the same source.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).