Word.ws English Dictionary

vulpine

/ˈvʌlpaɪn/

vulpine adjective: pertaining to a fox.

Adjective

vulpine (comparative more vulpine, superlative most vulpine)

  1. Pertaining to a fox.
    • She dared not raise her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the whiteness of the cloth.1910, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “The Bag”, in Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 80
  2. Having the characteristics of a fox; foxlike; cunning.
    • Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had bewailed as misfortune to herself.1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXVI, in Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Noun

vulpine (plural vulpines)

  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.
    • The family Canidae^([sic]) consists of two main subgroups, the vulpines (foxes) and the canines (wolves, coyotes, jackals, and dogs), and some intermediate “fox-dog” forms from South America.1980, Michael Wilson Fox, The Soul of the Wolf, page 127
  2. A person considered cunning.

vulpine meaning in Bengali and Arabic

vulpine in Bengali

শিয়ালের মতো ধূর্ত, চালাক

vulpine in Arabic

pertaining to a fox
ثَعْلَبِيّ ṯaʕlabiyy

Forms of vulpine

Adjective
comparativemore vulpine
superlativemost vulpine
Noun
pluralvulpines

Origin of vulpine

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”).

Words formed from vulpine

Questions about vulpine

What does vulpine mean?
Vulpine means pertaining to a fox.
What is vulpine in Bengali?
Vulpine in Bengali is শিয়ালের মতো ধূর্ত, চালাক. See Vulpine meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is vulpine?
Vulpine can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce vulpine?
Vulpine is pronounced /ˈvʌlpaɪn/.

Words near vulpine in the dictionary

  1. vulpicidisms
  2. vulpid
  3. vulpids
  4. vulpiform
  5. vulpinary
  6. vulpine
  7. vulpinely
  8. vulpines
  9. vulpinic acid
  10. vulpinism
  11. vulpinist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vulpine (page history and authors); vulpine (Bengali Wiktionary) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-vulpine.ogg.

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