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vulpine

/ˈvʌlpaɪn/adjective, noun

vulpine is an adjective meaning “Pertaining to a fox” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-U-L-P-I-N-E, and it appears about once in every 33 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does vulpine mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Pertaining to a fox.

  2. 2

    Having the characteristics of a fox; foxlike; cunning.

noun

  1. 1

    Any of certain canids called foxes (including true foxes, arctic foxes and grey foxes), distinguished from canines, which are regarded as similar to dogs and wolves.

  2. 2

    A person considered cunning.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce vulpine?

  • /ˈvʌlpaɪn/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-vulpine.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of vulpine

  • more vulpine comparative
  • most vulpine superlative
  • vulpines plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is vulpine?

Vulpine appears about once in every 33 million words in written English, the 176,009th 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).

Vulpine in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense pertaining to a fox:

LanguageWords
Frenchvulpin
GermanFuchs-
Portuguesevulpino

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 vulpine come from?

Borrowed from Latin vulpīnus (“foxy, fox-like”), from vulpēs, earlier volpēs (“fox”), from Proto-Indo-European *wl(o)p- (“fox”). Cognate with Welsh llywarn (“fox”), Ancient Greek ἀλώπηξ (alṓpēx), Armenian աղուէս (aġuēs), Albanian dhelpër, Lithuanian vilpišỹs (“wildcat”), Sanskrit लोपाश (lopāśa, “jackal, fox”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).