antechinus

antechinus noun: any member of the genus Antechinus of small carnivorous Australian marsupials that resemble shrews.

Image: Mel Williams from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

antechinus (plural antechinuses or (rare) antechini)

Any member of the genus Antechinus of small carnivorous Australian marsupials that resemble shrews.
- These are distinguished from the Monodelphia, or Placentalia, by bringing forth their young in a very rudimentary state, nourishing them in a “marsupium,” which is either a regular pouch or a simple skinfold, such as our native cats and antechini develop at the time of parturition.1873 November 5, Gerard Krefft, “Australian Natural History”, in Transactions of the Royal Society of New South Wales, for the Year 1873, Sydney, N.S.W.: Thomas Richards, […], published 1874, page 135
- Being on the West Coast at the time, and always anxious to forward any scientific investigations, I collected all the varieties of kangaroo rats, antechini, and rats that came under my observation.1886, T[homas] B[ather] Moore, “Western Tasmania”, in J[ames] P[ark] Thomson, editor, Proceedings of the Queensland Branch of the Geographical Society of Australasia. 1st Session, 1885-6., volume I...

Smaller than the wambengers, the antechinuses are secretive and are seldom seen by people unless they are caught and brought into houses by domestic cats.1970, W. D. L. Ride, Ella Fry, A Guide to the Native Mammals of Australia, page 116:
If held as a colony outside the breeding season, antechinus show relatively little aggression while still forming a linear hierarchy.2007, Stephen Jackson, Australian Mammals: Biology and Captive Management, unnumbered page:

plural	antechinuses
plural (rare)	antechini

Borrowed from taxonomic name Antechinus.

What does antechinus mean?: Antechinus means any member of the genus Antechinus of small carnivorous Australian marsupials that resemble shrews.
What is antechinus in Persian?: Antechinus in Persian is انتیکاینس. See Antechinus meaning in Persian.
How do you use antechinus in a sentence?: Smaller than the wambengers, the antechinuses are secretive and are seldom seen by people unless they are caught and brought into houses by domestic cats.
What part of speech is antechinus?: Antechinus is a noun.
What is the plural of antechinus?: The plural of antechinus is antechinuses.

Adapted from Wiktionary: antechinus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “antechinus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/antechinus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.