meerkitten

Formed by the compounding of meer- (the first element of meerkat) with kitten (“young cat”). The analysis of the -kat element of meerkat as cat is supported by meerkat’s ultimate derivation from the Middle Dutch meercatte, believed to have been formed from mere (“lake”, “sea”) + catte (“cat”).

Meerkats were jumping up and down in a state of great ferment. Suddenly, by the hundreds, they began diving into the pond. There was much pushing and shoving as the meerkats behind vied to reach the pond’s edge. The frenzy was collective; even tiny meerkittens were making for the water, barely being held back by mothers and guardians.

2001, Yann Martel, Life of Pi, Canongate, published 2003, →ISBN, page 267:

I woke up at dawn covered from head to toe in a living fur blanket. Some meerkittens had discovered the warmer parts of my body.

(informal) An infant or juvenile meerkat.


apeling

Just now the apeling was developing those arboreal tendencies which were to stand him in such good stead during the years of his youth, when rapid flight into the upper terraces was of far more importance and value than his undeveloped muscles and untried fighting fangs.

1919, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jungle Tales of Tarzan:

The murder had occurred only a week before and the baby weighed but ten-or-so pounds, barely twice its birth weight. In spite of its traumatic first experience at the hands of humans, the apeling showed little fear of us.

2005, Jim Heaney, Taste This, Taste That:


deerling

You will return after giving birth to your deerling?

1950, G.A. Natesan, The Indian review - Volume 51 - Page 85:

When shall the old king of the herd of deer be smelling my mouth without fear, taking me to be a lifeless thing, when I would be sitting in the forest in the padmasana (lotus pose) with the deerlings sitting in my lap?

1989, Hemacandra, Amritlal Savchand Gopani, Surendra Bothara, The Yoga shastra of Hemchandracharya:

He with childlike innocence and simplicity employees the most direct language only to talk to man a man, because his aim is to beckon to him: "Alas, seeing always the deer in the trap in jungle, even then the deerlings get into the crooked snares" [...]

1997, Krishan Lal Kalia, Eminent Personalities Of Kashmir:

Both girls yelped, falling into each other's arms. But it was only a dwarf deerling, no taller than Dart's waist. Its ears quivered. It stopped on tiny hooves, blind to the three of them, then bounded forward, toward the deadfall. Dart glanced after it.


quab

en-verb

quab (third-person singular simple present quabs, present participle quabbing, simple past and past participle quabbed)

quabs (present singular third-person)
quabbing (participle present)
quabbed (participle past)
quabbed (past)


chookie

‘Now, darling,’ she said to her client, ‘we have ten colours written on our chart so we can put our chookie back in its little house.’

1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 292:

(Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) A small or young domestic fowl; a chick.


wolf whelp

A young, especially an infant, wolf; a wolf cub.


spiderling

Any of various herbaceous plants of the genus Boerhavia.


mooseling

Gently, with a hand on its furry neck, the three- or four-day-old mooseling was towed back to the shore where the distraught mother was thrashing and stomping among the trees.

1915, Ruth Kedzie Wood, The Tourist's Maritime Provinces, Dodd, Mead, p. 42 (Google snippet view)

[M]oose and man are alike as caring parents, and the beast's tragedy, which the man has caused, smites the man's conscience and strengthens his resolve to be a good parent to mooseling as well as child.

1995, Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination, →ISBN, page 198:

[O]ur only visitor on the whole trip was a big moose and her mooseling, more interested in nibbling the brush than bothering us.

2010, Russell B. Hanson, “Rambling at the Edge”, in St Croix River Road Ramblings, page 50:


gooseling

I reared her myself—my little white gooseling;

1898, William Canton, A Child's Book of Saints:


lambie

Your lambies aren't lambies anymore, but they're pining for you just the same, and I'll drop them off on my way back if you want.

2008, Karen J. Hasley, Waiting for Hope, page 226:

The part I don't like about sheep and wool festivals? The part where the little lambies aren't considered part of the fiber-bearing aspect but as part of the snack-food aspect. Lambies on a stick or ground up into sausage are not nearly as much fun to imagine as gamboling lambies waiting happily to be shorn.

2011, Mary Beth Temple, The Secret Language of Knitters, page 113:

They are misguided by misinformation, and talking the Undisputed Truth is a physical means of weaning these little lambies from their childish and sheep like behaviour.

2014, Lee Maddaford, True Enlightenment, page 29:


cheeper

From cheep + -er, from the noise they make.


doglet

(nonstandard, rare) A young or small dog.


antlet

[…] if any one of the antlets wanted to come out of his silken covering he could be helped to cut his way through […]

1903, Agnes Warner McClelland Daulton, Wings and Stings, page 107:

I wondered whether ants found it necessary to hold classes of instruction for all upcoming antlets in order to maintain their organized and busy mound-building society.

1997, Larry Dean Olsen, Outdoor Survival Skills, page 3:


porcupette

To my horror, I saw that she had carefully retrieved a very live and healthy porcupette!

2001, Warner Shedd, Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind: A Naturalist Debunks Our Favorite Fallacies About Wildlife:

A mother porcupine can give birth to between one and four porcupettes at one time.

2013, Jeffrey Rouche, Porcupines in the Wild, page 16:


chasil

(obsolete) The caterpillar form of a locust


ewe lamb

It was my first book, my only book, my ewe lamb; but it was not a “work,” not an “important publication, ” like Mr. Lecky's “Map of Life." The reviewers did not welcome it either eagerly or seriously.

1900, The Book Lover, numbers 5-10, page 234:

A poor person's sole possession (in reference to the Bible, 2 Samuel xii).


parrotling

I can fancy myself there now, the sun and the sweetness of the orange blossom bewildering in their purity, the green parrotlings in a nest behind a carven god simmering away contentedly like half a dozen kettles until with an express train shriek a red and green parent whizzed past me bearing a dinner for one, […]

1903 April 11, F[lora] A[nnie] Steel, “The Beasts That Perish”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 95, number 2,476, London, page 449, column 1:


flipperling

1893 August, Rudyard Kipling, "Seal Lullaby", in "The White Seal", National Review.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; / Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

There the flipperlings—young seals—are born, and from there, as the ice begins to break up with the spring, they and their parents come floating southwards on huge blocks of ice.

1921, The Literary Digest, volume 71, page 20:

At last an unwary cod, in flight from the big male, sped close beside the flipperling.

1936, Latrobe Carroll, The Canadian Magazine:


ducklet

The copulatory organ looks like a pinkish root tip and its presence denotes a drakelet. In the cloaca of a ducklet no such organ can be seen.

1932, The Harper Adams Utility Poultry Journal, volume 17, page 553:


cowlet

—Chicago boasts of a citizen of fine discrimination and delicacy, who, riding in the suburbs with his best girl, passed a stable in the door of which stood a couple of calves. “See,” said the young lady, “those two cute little cowlets.” “Those are not cowlets, Araminta; they are bullets.”

1886, Hamilton Literary Magazine, Clippings, page 110:

A lurid lumination lights lithe Laura’s eyes, / (O, tender cowlet, kick the bucket o’er)— / A look of anger and of pained surprise, / A look that ne’er had lit those orbs before.

1888, The Blue and Gold, volume 15, The Light in Laura’s Eyes, page 172:

Separate all cowlets from the cows, as they drink all the milk. Cowlets should be earning their own living.

1913, Queensland Agricultural Journal, page 226:

After a short while a thin small cow was released from the gangway leading to the menagerie. Provided with a scarlet cape, Juanito strutted forward towards the scampering cowlet. […] So in vest and black clown’s pantaloons, he provoked the cowlet and played the heavy matador. With all the grand airs of a Bombita Chica or a Montes he advanced to the assault. The dutiful cowlet gave a low. The little cow almost laughed to see such sport.

1932, Wyndham Lewis, Snooty Baronet, Haskell House Publishers Ltd., published 1971, page 201:

Book Agent. Oh, so you are interested in farming? Isn’t that a coincidence? The Everyday Encyclopedia Of Useful Facts included a five-hundred-and-seventy-three-page volume on farm and country life. / Mr. Jordan. (Interested) It does! / Book Agent. It certainly does. I think I have some sample leaflets here. (Opens a briefcase and takes out a pamphlet with some colored pages in it) See! Here is a picture showing a group of contented little cowlets browsing by a babbling brook. / Mr. Jordan. (Puzzled) Cow'''lets? / Book Agent. Yes, little cows. Aren’t they dears? / Mr. Jordan. I thought you said they were cows. / Book Agent. (Laughs) Now, aren’t you the clever one, though?

1934, Boyce Loving, Swappers: A Comedy in Three Acts, page 25:

“I am not sure a compilation of odds and ends should be called a ‘book.’ Perhaps ‘booklet’ would be the better designation. My daughter, when quite young, once spoke of a heifer calf she saw grazing on the rim of the road as a ‘cowlet.’ In reality, the wayside animal was a ‘bullet.’ Though this book, or booklet, isn’t even calf-bound, the analogy should have been close enough to make me wary of jumping to a conclusion. However, it is too late now.

1937, Quarterly Bulletin: The Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio, page 17:

YES — imagine, if you can, that all human beings are cows and or bulls for just one day (I just can’t stand the thoughts of being a cow for more than one day). SO — lets^([sic]) take the cow and bull side of the question first. REMEMBER — you are a cow or bull. Mrs. Cow has been home all day busy getting the cotton seed meal and hulls ready for dinner, tending to the little cowlets and bullets and baking a bale of hay.

1959, C. B. Kitchens, X-syrps from the Trickem News Chronic, page 5:

What’s a meta for anyway, I say, if not to mix with chicken lips, cow intestines and pig ganglia, foisted on poor defenseless cowlets held captive in feed lots for a significant portion of their tiny, meaningless lives, destined for the compressed air gun, the hook, and the heavy hammer, and the human Bar-B-Q bun, rotisserie and intestinal villi.

2004, Michael A. Lewis, “Culture”, in Écritage, Arana Gulch Press, published 2010, →ISBN, Endangered Species: January 1, 2004, page 27:


swallowling

Then back to the slender bough, which drooped under the weight of four swallowlings in a row, and now swayed with the agitations of their welcome to hovered wings and a full beak.

1923, Harold John Massingham, Untrodden Ways, page 85:

And swallows are the spring's agents, nesting in the rafters, eating, defecating, procreating, producing prodigious flocks of swallowlings.

1989, Stephen Owen, Yuwen (Suo'an), Mi-Lou: Poetry and the Labyrinth of Desire (page 92)


mouselet

Pretty soon she would have a litter of five or six tiny, pink, unfurred mouselets to put into it.

1963, Friends Journal, volume 9, page 105:


storkling

/ˈstɒːɹklɪŋ/

The owner of a house found a single egg in the nest of a pair of storks, built on the chimney, and substituted for it a goose’s egg, which in due time was hatched and produced a gosling instead of the expected storkling. The male bird was thrown into the greatest excitement by this event, and finally flew away. The female, however, remained on the nest, and continued to care for the changeling as though it were her own offspring. On the morning of the fourth day the male reappeared accompanied by nearly five hundred storks, which held a mass meeting in an adjacent field. The assembly was addressed by several speakers, each orator posting himself on the same spot before beginning his harangue. The deliberations and discussions occupied nearly the entire forenoon, when suddenly the meeting broke up and all the storks pounced upon the unfortunate female and her suppositious young one, killed them both, and, after destroying the polluted ness, took wing and departed, and were never seen there again.
The story is told of a pair of storks who had lived together for many years in a village. One day, while the male was absent, a younger suitor appeared and began to pay court to the wife. She received his attentions at first with indifference, but she finally fell into the snares of her passionate and persistent adorer. His visits became more frequent, and at last he succeeded in so completely fascinating the matron that she was persuaded to accompany him to a marshy meadow, where her unsuspecting husband was engaged in catching frogs, and to join her gay paramour in putting the old stork to death.

1919, “Of General Human Interest. Tales of the Domestic Life of Storks”, in William J. Robinson, editor, The Medical Critic and Guide Incorporating the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, volume 22, numbers 1 (November) (from 401–440), The Critic and Guide Company 12 Mt. Morris Park West New York, page 431:


hareling

I'm coming, I'm coming, the nice old stoat, who is so fond of tender harelings.

1886, Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Baron Brabourne, Friends and Foes from Fairy Land, page 352:

In central Finland first-year children are greeted with "Hello, big-eyed, long eared harelings", using a dialect word for a young hare born in August, […]

1978, Leea Virtanen, Children's Lore, page 67:

The family's proliferating rabbit population was memorialized in The Hareling, a children's book done as a cottage project, with Ed producing the text - about a newborn rabbit found in the fields — to accompany Helene's drawings.

2002, Tom Clark, Edward Dorn: A World of Difference, page 327:

The hare, the hare-kin,
Old Big-bum, Old Bouchart,
The hare-ling, the frisky one, […]


horselet

As for the Entrails of Hogs, and eſpecially the Horſelet, which Publius Syrus preferred before all Meats, I find them to be ſtopping, and of bad Nouriſhment;

1746, Thomas Moffett, corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Health’s Improvement: or, Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, Method and Manner of Preparing All Sorts of Foods Used in This Nation, London: […] T. Osborne, page 151:

The crowd of merry-makers who left the Palace tired and happy after pantomime and tea, contained a few pale young journalists, as tired and not less happy, who had neither witnessed the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, nor tasted the delights of the Camera Obscura, who had bought no sweets and put no pennies into automatic machines, who had neither been weighed, nor tested their strength, nor run races with mechanical horselets, but who had the proud satisfaction of knowing that they had done something towards enriching the Post Office and ruining their employer.

1888 January 29, The Reflector, volume I, number 5, London: James Stephen, page 91:

They say most any guy can lead a horse to water, yes, indeed; but then, you bet, it takes some gink to make his horselets take the drink.

An ancient landslide had trapped them in a side canyon, went the story, and they evolved into tiny horselets.


porklet

The herd of swine, at that time, more especially set them a longing, from a circumstance of which God has been graciously pleased that we should be particularly informed; and that that they were no sucking pigs, nor mere porklets, or tigerigtigs; but they were a herd of swine feeding, that is, put up to fatten, and all but ready for the butcher.

1829, The Lion, volume IV, London: […] Richard Carlile, page 796:

Nearly a month later, on “the Friday after the Feast of the Purification of Our Lady the Virgin” (which occurred on Feb. 2.), “the six little porklets or sucklings” were brought to trial.

1906, E[dward] P[ayson] Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, page 350:

The writer took twenty porklets, aged from two to three months, belonging to five different litters, and divided them into four groups, so arranged that all the litters were represented in each group.

1927, The Scottish Journal of Agriculture, page 466:

All other countries which included swine in their census returns, with the exception of England and Wales and Scotland, have made a distinction between porklets and full grown animals. Among these countries the following have adopted for porklets the limit of six months as recommended in the standard form:[…]A subdivision by sex was required in Argentina for porklets, in Egypt for pigs under one year old, in Western Australia for pigs under one year old other than those used for breeding.

1937, The First World Agricultural Census (1930): A Methodological Study of the Questions Contained in the Forms Adopted for the Purposes of the Census in the Various Countries, pages 103 and 106:

Stage 1 is from the birth of porklets to pork being ready for slaughter.

2020, Honghua Chen, Fen Xu, “Barriers and Facilitators of Front Identification in China’s Pork Traceability Syste,”, in Antonio J. Tallón-Ballesteros, editor, Modern Management based on Big Data I: Proceedings of MMBD 2020, IOS Press, →ISBN, page 45:

A young pig, especially one that is to be raised to produce pork.


yilt

[…] or that when they wished to breed from sows or yilts there would be no boars available.

1918, Live Stock Journal, volume 87, page 359:

(UK, regional) Alternative form of gilt (“young female pig, at or nearing the age of first breeding”)


turtlet

From turtle + -let (“diminutive suffix”).

The turtlet scurried across the sandy beach, its tiny legs moving quickly as it searched for a safe place to hide.

Only recollect when, off Ceylon, I picked up that pretty little turtlet, which you all contended was a log of wood,—but I knew he was a turtle.

1831, Edward John Trelawny, Adventures of a Younger Son, volume 3, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, page 31:

Of course comparatively very few individuals of a brood of several dozen Turtlets reach maturity, but they meet with their death through Sea-birds, Crocodiles, Sharks, and similar enemies, which in all probability swallow them regardless of the number of disposition of their victims' scutes.

1899, Arthur Willey, Zoological Results Based on Material from New Britain, New Guinea, Loyalty Islands and Elsewhere, Collected During the Years 1895, 1896 and 1897, volume 3, University Press, page 221:

Imagine a dark mite of a turtlet struggling to the surface in the middle of a huge expanse of white sand over and on which numerous enemies are lurking. It behooves the mite to get to the sea as soon as possible, but how can it know which way to go?

1960, Clifford Hillhouse Pope, The Reptile World, Knopf, page 108:

She craned forward to watch exactly what happened and saw that the turtlet in the centre of the three was moving its head slowly from side to side.

1973, H. Robert Bustard, Kay's Turtles, Collins, →ISBN, page 107:

Soon, about 30 young turtlets are circling the illuminated hatching point; the light from our guide's lamp acts as a fence, keeping them grouped together.

2018 June 8, Kathryn Wortley, “Watch your step, the turtles are hatching on Yakushima”, in Japan Times:

Bull sharks have the strongest bite of any measured shark and can eat turtlets as well as other bull sharks and probably have no problem ripping open a canoe like a can of salted mackerel.

2020 February 20, Kai Powell, “Maneater Hands-On Preview – Sun's Out, Fins Out”, in Wccftech:


drakelet

The copulatory organ looks like a pinkish root tip and its presence denotes a drakelet. In the cloaca of a ducklet no such organ can be seen.

1932, The Harper Adams Utility Poultry Journal, volume 17, page 553:


wolf-child

Mr. Neilson also adds that a jemidar told him that when he was a lad he remembered going with others to see a wolf-child which had been netted.

1898 January 5, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Philadelphia, page 121:

A human child that has been raised by wolves from infancy.


spideret

What shrieks and groans of widow spideresses and orphaned spiderets must haunt his guilty slumbers!

1830 September 11, Horace Guilford, “The King of the Spiders”, in The Olio; or, Museum of Entertainment, volume VI, number XII, London: […] Shackell and Carfrae, […] Joseph Shackell […], published 1831, page 187, column 1:

See! what a busy region we disturb when we lift this stone! Half-a-dozen scarlet-bodied spiderets, “soldiers,” scampering away in most unmilitary haste to hide under crumbs of brown earth; here a grey-brownish slug, there a jet black one, larger and fatter, put out first one and then another tentacle, resenting the intrusion on their slumber, while you wonder how such big, soft animals can lie, to say nothing of sleeping, under a mass of stone like this.

1885, F. R. Coles, “[Communications.] I. A Leaflet from the Book of Nature.”, in The Transactions and Journal of Proceedings of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History & Antiquarian Society, sessions 1883-84, 1884-85, 1885-86, Dumfries: […] [T]he Courier and Herald Offices, published 1887, page 89:

Yesterday coming in from the garden Annie called my attention to a something in a cobweb that I had thought was a spider and had left undisturbed, but on looking at it through my glasses it seemed a cluster of tiny eggs, with one or two tiny spiderets in motion.

1918 May 10, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1879-1922, volume II, London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson, […], published 1926, page 354:

Mr. Merrywinkle, the spider, crawling through the corn, / Spotted Mistress June Bug on a summer morn / Oh, how he loved Ms. June Bug! […] And the couple settled, happily, within the spinach row, / To raise a thousand spiderets, each a handsome lad, / All proud as punch to call Mr. Merrywinkle, “Dad.”

2011, Ken Layton, “Mr. Merrywinkle”, in Light Verse & Limericks, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 20:


spiderlet

Horticulturists know that a pampered spider-plant will not produce its offshoot stolon (its spiderlets); only when its soil is not rich and fertilizer is withheld (i.e., the spider-plant feels starved and threatened) will it start producing stolon in profusion.

1983, S[hlomo] Giora Shoham, “[Replenish the Earth and Subdue It] Da Capo: The Next Generation”, in Sex as Bait: Eve, Casanova, and Don Juan, Brisbane, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, →ISBN, page 59:

If you have a spider plant, prune off spiderlets (miniature plants or offsets at the branch tips), place them in water until they show roots, and then transplant. […] Grow more plants by rooting spiderlets (the mother plant’s extensions) in soil or water.

1998, Bill Marken, The Editors of the National Gardening Association, Container Gardening For Dummies®, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, Inc., →ISBN, pages 167 and 170:

What’s fun about the spider plant are its babies—it shoots off little “mini spiders” that trail down around the edges. It you clip off these offspring and set them in water, they’ll sprout roots, and you can turn them into new plants. BASIC CARE In order for the spider to produce “spiderlets,” it needs enough light.

2006, Mary Kate Hogan, “Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum)”, in 37 Houseplants Even You Can’t Kill, New York, N.Y.: Sterling Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 80:


foxlet

The little fox will grow a big fox, / Provided God will grant him life; / But to release him in the meantime / I think would be foolish indeed. / Two foxes that were but foxlets, as yet, / Quite young little things, / Were captured by chance / By the good Doctor Grumberg / On the Isles of Spitzbergen.

1898, Henri Lachambre, Alexis Machuron, unknown translator, “The Erline Jarl”, in Andrée and His Balloon, Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co, →OCLC, page 143:

It flashed on me that I had come a month / Too late for trapping, that foxlets in the spring / May grow sharp teeth with the passing of a moon . . .

1941, Lew Sarett, “Fox-Heart”, in The Collected Poems of Lew Sarett, New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →OCLC, section XIII (Lumberjacks and Voyageurs), page 303:

I remember reading while I was pregnant about emotions, and how I would become eloquently compassionate towards all living things, like the mother fox who ushers an orphaned bear cub to her breast with her other tiny foxlets.

2016, Mhairi Mackay, “Accident”, in Secrets and Confessions, Edinburgh: Scottish Book Trust, →ISBN, page 14:


drakeling

Good night, darling; take that kiss to your respected mother, and tell her with my compliments that we can’t afford to make ducks and drakes of the romance of our little pet’s life: she will hatch those birds for herself in due time, and remain cluck-clucking, wisely, but sadly, like a perplexed old hen, when her ducklings and drakelings have unexpectedly taken the water.

1858, “Edith Clarel: A Story from Three Points of View”, in The Money Bag: Literature, Politics, Finance, volume I, number 4, London: Daniel F. Oakey, […], page 232:

Referring to Table 1 it will be seen that if a breeding duck produces 40 marketable progeny each year (and in practice this should be achieved) half of which are ducklings and the other half drakelings, and these birds realise 2s. per lb. live weight, then that breeding duck would return approximately £15 10s. over feeding costs for the 12 months.

1951, Supplement to the Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Western Australia, volume 28, page 216:

Muscovy ducks with ducklings. This is the most popular breed for table purposes. They make weights of up to 5 lb. for ducklings at 13 to 14 weeks, and up to 9 lb. for drakelings at 16 weeks when correctly handled.

1961, Allan A[rthur] McArdle, Poultry Management and Production (Agricultural and Livestock Series), Sydney, N.S.W.: Angus and Robertson, page 563:


coconut worm

The larva of the Asian palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus.


toadpole

Toadpole Toad after metamorphosis 40g

1963, Hermann Stieve, Zeitschrift für mikroskopisch-anatomische Forschung, volume 70, Academische Verslagsgesellschaft Geest & Portig K.-G., page 149:

secondly, in many hormone-target organ interactions including the effect of estrogen on rat uterus, growth hormone and hydrocortisone on rat liver and thyroid hormone on toadpole liver, newly formed microsomes have been isolated which have increased protein synthesizing ability (Tata, 1968).

1970, Harvey W. Mohrenweiser, Role of Hormones in Controlling Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis During Lactogenesis, Michigan State University. Departments of Biochemistry and Dairy, page 36:

Ah, if only I could swim as well as that! Like a fish . . . or anyway, a toadpole.”)

1984, Phil Murphy, Summer Island, Oberon Press, →ISBN, page 113:

Her stomach was swollen, and she was only a bag of bones, with a large head like a toadpole in the Oitino stream.

1989, Okot p'Bitek, “Section 3”, in White Teeth, reprint edition, Heinemann Kenya, →ISBN, page 29:

I call them the toadpole and the frogpole. Now the only way to distinguish between the two is that the toadpole tends to turn into a toad, whereas the frogpole will tend to turn into a frog.

2003 November 19, Peter Cook, “The Tadpole Expert”, in William W. Cook, editor, Tragically I Was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook, illustrated, reprint edition, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 63:

VINNY. Yo, Mrs. B., I just made the incision on the toadpole! Were you watchin'?

2006, Charlie Shanian, Shari Simpson, Maybe Baby, It's You, Dramatic Publishing, →ISBN, page 20:

toadfrog left bog whole log shagooon 'gooon toadpole go on happening go on frogging toard toadfrog Happening tail gone tale told tailless gate eggs mate

2011 July 11, Anil, “Sounds Alike Fun”, in HOW TO DOUBLE THE MEANING OF LIFE, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 156:

Females then stay in the pond just long enough to lay their eggs. Each female can lay up to 8,000 eggs. The eggs hatch after 10-20 days into toadpoles, which are black and gregarious; they then metamorphose and leave the pond when only just over 1cm long.

2018 July 5, Adrian Thomas, “Gardening for Reptiles and Amphibians”, in RSPB Gardening for Wildlife: New edition, 2, illustrated edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 101:

[…] leaving all consistency of aside, I fancied myself a crab, an octopus in an octopus hole, the young octopuses in a consortium of of octopuses; I found myself playing toadpole in the bubbles of the sludge; but the worst part arose when I reached the immutable point of being absent from myself; my gaze would then settle upon nothing, it captured solely the luminous halo of the things around me; I began to sniff, to grunt, and to lend my ear toward my surroundings; […]

2022 October 18, Patrick Chamoiseau, edited by Valérie Loichot, Crusoe’s Footprint, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN:

A young toad in its larval stage of development that lives in water, has a tail and no legs, and, like a fish, breathes through gills.