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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

fossa.

A pit, groove, cavity, or depression.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfɒsə/UK/ˈfɑsə/US/ˈfɔsə/US
  1. A pit, groove, cavity, or depression.

  2. A long, narrow, shallow depression on the body of an extraterrestrial body, such as a planet or moon.

Where this word comes from

Unadapted borrowing from Latin fossa (“a ditch, trench, fosse”). Doublet of fosse.

noun/ˈfuː.sə/UK, US/ˈfʊ.sə/UK, US/ˈfɒ.sə/UK/ˈfɑ.sə/US
  1. A large nocturnal reddish-brown catlike mammal (Cryptoprocta ferox) of the civet family, endemic to the rainforests of Madagascar. It is slender, long-tailed and has retractile claws and anal scent glands.

Where this word comes from

[Alt: Cryptoprocta ferox Borrowing from Malagasy fosa which likely once referred to the Malayan weasel (Mustela nudipes) prior to a semantic shift, thus cognate with Malay pusak and Tagalog pusa both meaning "cat".

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.