Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Wombat |
WombatNoun1. Burrowing herbivorous Australian marsupials about the size of a badger. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "wombat" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1871. (references) |
Note: Wombat \Wom"bat\, noun. [From the native name, womback, wombach, in Australia.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | WOMBAT /wom'bat/ adj. [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which are both profoundly uninteresting in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'. See also crawling horror, SMOP. Also note the rather different usage as a metasyntactic variable in {Commonwealth Hackish. Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats. Source: Jargon File. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Common Wombat Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Subclass: Marsupialia Order: Diprotodontia Suborder: Vombatiformes Family: Vombatidae Genus: Vombatus Species: ursinis Binomial name Vombatus ursinis
Common WombatsThe Wombat is a Australian marsupial, in appearance rather like a small, very short-legged and muscular bear. Wombats feed on grasses, sedges and roots, and dig extensive burrow systems with their rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws. Although mainly crepuscular and nocturnal, wombats will also venture out to feed on cool or overcast days. They are not as easily seen as many animals, but leave ample evidence of their passage, treating fences as a minor inconvenience to be gone through or under.
Wombats, like all the larger living marsupials, are part of the Diprotodontia, which has two sub-orders: the large and diverse Phalangerida (kangaroos, possums, and relatives), and the Vombatiformes (which is the Latin for "wombat-shaped things"). Five of the seven known families are extinct, only the koala and the three species of wombat survive. The ancestors of the wombat evolved sometime between 55 and 26 million years ago (no useful fossil record has yet been found for this period) and about 12 species flourished until well into the ice ages. The Diprotodon, or giant wombat, was the largest marsupial to ever live and coexisted with the earliest inhabiants of Australia.
Wombats have an extraordinarily slow metabolism, taking around 14 days to complete digestion, and do not move quickly often. When required, however, they can easily out-run a human, and summon immense reserves of strength - the primary defence of a wombat against a predator underground (such as a dog) is to crush it against the roof of the tunnel until it stops breathing.
There are three species, all around a metre long and weighing between 20 and 35kg.
- The Common Wombat (Vombatus ursinus) is widespread in the cooler and better watered parts of southern and eastern Australia, and in mountain districts as far north as the south of Queensland, but is declining in Western Victoria and South Australia. Common wombats can breed every two years and produce a single cub, which leaves the pouch after six to nine months but follows the mother about and breast-feeds for another year.
- The Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is found in scattered areas of semi-arid scrub and mallee from the eastern Nullarbor Plain to the New South Wales border area. It is the smallest wombat at around 775 to 935mm and 20 to 32kg, and the young often do not survive dry seasons. It is classified as vulnerable: a healthy population still remains but appears to be ageing: it is feared that the consistently sparse rainfall of recent years has prevented successful breeding. (It takes three consecutive good seasons for a Southern Hairy-nose to reach near-adulthood.) Wombat specialists are concerned that a continuation of the current trend to dryer climate in arid Southern Australia could be a serious threat to the Southern Hairy-nose wombat.
- The Yaminon or Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii), was found across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland as recently as 100 years ago, but is now restricted to a tiny 300ha range within the 3160ha Epping Forest National Park in Queensland. It is probably the rarest large mammal in the world and is critically endangered, with 70 to 100 individuals remaining. Slightly larger than the Common Wombat and able to breed a little faster (two young every three years), it has very little habitat left and the remaining 300ha has become infested with African buffel grass, which out-competes the native grasses Yaminon prefers to feed on. A two metre-high predator-proof fence was constructed around 2500ha of the park in 2000, but captive breeding and translocation programs have been abandoned for the time being because the population in the sole remaining Yaminon colony is considered too small to allow the safe removal of the 15 or 20 individuals needed to start a new wild colony, and because more than a decade of captive breeding research with Common and Southern Hairy-nosed wombats has produced only a handful of successful births.
Wombat
Further Reading
- The Secret Life of Wombats, James Woodford, Text Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-877008-43-5.
- The Death of a Wombat, Ivan Smith, drawings by Clifton Pugh, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973, hardcover, 62 pages, ISBN 0-684-13538-8. A humble wombat meets a tragic end during a fire.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Wombat."
Crosswords: Wombat |
| English words defined with "wombat": Phascolome ♦ Rhizophaga. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "wombat": crawling horror ♦ Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ♦ top-level domain ♦ wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Wombat" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. French (wombat). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Wombat City (2001) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
 |
| "Wombat" by L L Commentary: "Wombat in Urimbirra Wildlife Sanctuary, South Australia." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| "Wombat" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 84.21% of the time. "Wombat" is used about 19 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 84.21% | 16 | 87,710 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 5.26% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Noun (proper) | 5.26% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Noun (common) | 5.26% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 19 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "wombat"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Arabic | الومبت حيوان. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | австралийско двуутробно животно. (various references) | |
French | wombat, phascolome. (various references) | |
Greek | μαρσιποφόρο ζώο τησ αυστραλίασ (kangaroo), φασκωλόμυσ. (various references) | |
Hungarian | vombat, erszényes medve. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ombatway.(various references) | |
Russian | вомбат. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | vombat. (various references) | |
Swedish | pungdjur (marsupial). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | Lasiorhinus kreftii, Vombatidae. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "wombat": wombats. (additional references) | |
| |
"Wombat" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Kombat, wambat, womad, womak, womax, wombatt, wombaty, wombe, wombit, wompat. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "wombat" (pronounced wÄ"mba't) |
| 3 | -b a' t | acrobat, brickbat. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-m-o-t-w" | |
-2 letters: ambo, atom, boat, bota, moat, tomb, womb. | |
-3 letters: abo, bam, bat, boa, bot, bow, mat, maw, moa, mob, mot, mow, oat, tab, tam, tao, taw, tom, tow, twa, two, wab, wat, wot. | |
-4 letters: ab, am, at, aw, ba, bo, ma, mo, om, ow, ta, to, wo. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-m-o-t-w" | |
+1 letter: wombats. | |
+5 letters: blameworthy. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Digital Art 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Translations: Ancient 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
