antechinus
noun
antechinus is a noun meaning “Any member of the genus Antechinus of small carnivorous Australian marsupials that resemble shrews” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-N-T-E-C-H-I-N-U-S, and it appears about once in every 35 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of antechinus is antechinuses; Wiktionary also lists antechini (rare).
What does antechinus mean?
noun
- 1
Any member of the genus Antechinus of small carnivorous Australian marsupials that resemble shrews.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of antechinus
- antechinuses plural
- antechini plural, rare
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is antechinus?
Antechinus appears about once in every 35 million words in written English, the 180,281st 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).
Antechinus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense marsupial:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Breitfuß-Beutelmäuse |
| Portuguese | rato-marsupial-australiano |
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 antechinus come from?
Borrowed from taxonomic name Antechinus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).