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DONKEY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Domestic beast of burden descended from the African wild ass; patient but stubborn
Synonyms:
domestic ass; donkey; Equus asinus
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("donkey" is a kind of...):
ass (hardy and sure-footed animal smaller and with longer ears than the horse)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "donkey"):
burro (small donkey used as a pack animal)
moke (British informal for donkey)
Holonyms ("donkey" is a member of...):
Equus; genus Equus (type genus of the Equidae: only surviving genus of the family Equidae)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The symbol of the Democratic Party; introduced in cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1874
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("donkey" is a kind of...):
allegory; emblem (a visible symbol representing an abstract idea)
Context examples:
“Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The thing would be for us all to come on donkeys, Jane, Miss Bates, and me—and my caro sposo walking by.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with a distaff as she went.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
“It was a donkey,” said my aunt; “and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Come on a donkey, however, if you prefer it.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Donkeys! and go out to the assault.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I am convinced, said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, that Dick's character is not a character to keep the donkeys off.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
We arrived at Lincoln's Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger's cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
