Etymology

1710; compound of veel ‎(“much”) +‎ vraat ‎(“gobbling, eating gluttonously”), calque of German Vielfraß or Low German Veelfraat. The term originally meant simply ‘glutton’ in German, but was applied to the hyena in pre-modern times. In the 15th century, Old Norwegian fjellfross ‎(“wolverine”, literally “mountain cat”) was borrowed into Middle Low German by Hanseatic fur traders as villevrās and folk-etymologically blended with the existing word for ‘glutton’, possibly influenced by Finnish ahma ‘glutton; wolverine’, giving veelvratz (Reinke de Vos, 1498), vēlevrās, vēlevrāt. The meaning ‘wolverine’ was initially the only one received into Dutch, although by 1849 the word had acquired the meaning ‘glutton’.

Pronunciation