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A muskrat is a brown animal that lives in and beside lakes, rivers, and wet land in North America. It swims well, eats plants, and builds a lodge or a hole in the bank. It looks a little like a large rat, and it has a musky smell. That is one usual story for the English name. Though actually, the name may come from an Algonquian word such as Abenaki moskwas, later spelled to look like the English words musk and rat. It belongs to the same broad animal group as rats and mice, but it is not a true rat. People trapped it for fur. You will not see wild muskrats in Taiwan.
麝鼠
組成The English spelling looks like musk + rat. That may be the real make-up, or an older Native American name rewritten to match those English words. Scholars are not sure which story is the whole truth.
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
muskratnoun/ˈmʌskɹæt/
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A semiaquatic rodent of the tribe Ondatrini.
- 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter IX. "The Sea and the Desert", page 187. He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes, coons, and wild mice were found there, but no squirrels.
- Later, dozing in the lamplight, he saw muskrats everywhere. Their small supple forms slipped busily along the floor at dusk, continually perfecting their burrows. He saw them pulling soft weeds and holding juicy roots in their tiny paws to eat.
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Any of several shrews in the family Soricidae, especially an Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus).
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obsoleteA bandicoot rat.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。