This means that the English speakers call this animal a little armored animal, while the Germans just think it is wearing a belt. It comes from a combination of the Spanish word armad(o) armed and the Latin diminutive suffix -illo. The English word is without a doubt cooler this time. In German this is an animal that has a belt around it, which refers to the hard outer shell of the armadillo. Which is cooler, a bear that washes his food or an animal that scratches his food? Gürteltier – belt animal It refers to the same practice as the German does, but we don’t recognize it as easily, because English uses other roots for its words rather than using the English words to make a combination. It comes from the Algonquian word arahkun, which is in turn derived from the word arahkunem meaning “he scratches with his hands”. In this case, we have a bear that washes (more specifically it refers to the raccoon’s habit of washing his food before he eats it). This one often gets mentioned, because there are a lot of German words for animals that have either pig or bear as their base and then some adjective that describes the bear or pig. In English it is a thorny pig and in German it is a pig with spikes. The English word again comes from the Latin, which is “porcus”, pig and “spina”, thorn. comes from a pig and pine, which sounds like a spine, which is another older word for a spike or prickle. This one fascinates me, because I recognize this similarity immediately when I hear the word porcupine. Again, the German and English are exactly the same. So even in English a hippo is a horse of the river. The English word hippopotamus comes from the Latin word hippos, “horse” and the adjective of the word for “river or rushing water”, potamos. The German word for hippopotamus seems to imply that hippos are just fat horses that live in water. The English word “skunk” is a combination of two Proto-Algonquian words, which I will now butcher the pronunciation of */šek-/ “to urinate” + */-a:kw/ “fox.” became */šeka:kwa/ which eventually turned into the word we now know as skunk, so while the Germans may call this a stink animal, we English speakers call it a urinating fox. While this word is entertaining in German, it is more entertaining in English, but no one seems to realize it. Herr Antrim’s List of Awesome German WordsĪwesome German Words for Creatures Stinktier – literally “stink animal”.Awesome German Words for Non-Living Things.