What does jaguar mean?
Jaguar most commonly denotes a large wild cat of the species Panthera onca, native to the Americas. Its coat is usually golden-orange or yellowish, marked with dark spots that often form rosette shapes, although coloration varies among populations. Jaguars are powerful hunters, capable of taking large prey and travelling through forests, grasslands, and wetlands. The name also appears as the proper-noun brand of a British automobile manufacturer known for luxury cars with distinctive styling. In ordinary animal-related writing, however, jaguar refers unambiguously to the cat rather than to any other spotted big cat. The word is notable because it preserves a form of an Indigenous American language through Spanish and Portuguese, while also standing for one of the world's strongest and most formidable felines.
nounA large, heavy-bodied wild cat native to the Americas, typically golden-orange with black spots or rosettes and a powerful bite. The name is also used in the registered name Jaguar for a long-running British automobile marque.
- A large spotted wild cat, Panthera onca, native to Central and South America and formerly found as far north as the southwestern United States.
- A member of the Jaguar automobile marque.
"A jaguar moved silently through the dense undergrowth at dusk."
"Researchers fitted the jaguar with a tracking collar to study its movement across the forest."
"The restored Jaguar has a long hood and a distinctive leaping feline emblem."
The standard plural is jaguars; jaguar is unchanged when modifying another noun, as in jaguar habitat.
"Jaguars once ranged through the southwestern United States."
The jaguar is the third-largest cat in the world and has one of the strongest bites relative to its size.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does jaguar come from?
Jaguar comes through Spanish, in which jaguar is a borrowing related to Portuguese jaguar, from the South American Indigenous word usually cited as yaguara. English began using the word for the large spotted cat in the 17th century, with an earlier sense referring to a fierce or wild animal. The name was later adopted as the registered brand of the British automobile company founded as Jaguar Cars in the 20th century.
How jaguar is actually used
In the animal sense, jaguar is standard in British and American English. As an automobile name, Jaguar is a proper noun and a registered trademark, so the brand should not be confused with the animal noun or used generically to mean a similar type of car.
Easily confused with jaguar
A jaguar is a large, stocky spotted cat, whereas a jaguarundi is a much smaller, slender, mostly uniformly coloured cat.
A jaguar and a leopard are distinct species; both have spotted coats, but the jaguar is generally heavier-bodied and has more strongly patterned rosettes.