"mazama" - Word of the Day from the OED

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mazama, n.

DRAFT ENTRY June 2008

Brit. /mzm/, U.S. /mzm/  [< scientific Latin Mazama, genus name (1817: see quot. 1817 at sense 1) < French mazame MAZAME n. Compare earlier MAZAME n.
  For pronunciation history compare note s.v. MAZAME n. The pronunciation /mzm/ has been associated with the form mazama since the 1890 ed. of Webster.] 

    1. Any of various American deer and other ruminants, esp. the Rocky Mountain goat, Oreamnos americanus. Cf. MAZAME n. Now rare.
  Hence the name ‘The Mazamas’, adopted by a society of mountain-climbers in the United States in 1894 (Good Words (1901) Feb. 101).

1817 C. S. RAFINESQUE in Amer. Monthly Mag. 1 363/2 Both species having simple unbranched solid straight horns, must belong to my genus Mazama instead of the genus Cervus, of which they had been considered a kind. 1827 E. GRIFFITH et al. Cuvier's Animal Kingdom IV. 290 In that paper the Mazama is noticed as inferior in bulk to a domestic goat but higher on the legs. 1834 Penny Cycl. II. 71/1 The same naturalist considers the present group..to comprise the animals long since described by Hernandez under the generic name of Mazama. 1856 C. KNIGHT Cycl. Nat. Hist. I. 259/1 Mazama. Has small, conical, round, nearly erect horns, [etc.]. 1879 Cassell's Nat. Hist. III. 27 The Mazama or Mountain Goat of California and the Rocky Mountains.

    2. spec. In form Mazama. A genus of American deer, now containing only the brockets (see BROCKET n. 2).

1895 Science 22 Feb. 208/1 But the generic name Mazama..is the earliest generic name for any American deer, as far as known. 1915 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 34 521 The distribution of the genus Mazama includes, as is well known, nearly all of tropical and subtropical America. 1957 Encycl. Brit. VII. 135/1 Mazama.The deer of this genus are all small species, allied to Hippocamelus. 1991 R. M. NOWAK Walker's Mammals of World (ed. 5) II. 1392/2 Stallings (1984) indicated that fruits and seeds are important for Mazama.

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