reindeer

plural reindeers

1. pluralAny Arctic and subarctic-dwelling deer of the species Rangifer tarandus, with a number of subspecies.

   Santa Claus' sleigh is supposedly pulled by nine reindeer

   4 more examples

   Here is a prodigious number of wild beaſts, as ſtags, bears, wolves, foxes of various colours, martens, hares, glittens, beavers, otters, elk, and rein deer: the latter is leſs than a stag.

   1768, D[aniel] Fenning, “LAPLAND”, in The Royal English Dictionary; or, A Treasury of the English Language, 3rd improved edition, London: Printed for R. Baldwin, Hawes and Co., T. Caslon, S. Crowder, J. Johnson, Wilson and Fell, Robinson and Roberts, and B. Collins, →OCLC

   The rein-deer, which in Scandinavia can scarcely exist to the south of the sixty-fifth parallel, descends, in consequence of the greater coldness of the climate, to the fiftieth degree, in Chinese Tartary, and often roves into a country of more southern latitude than any part of England.

   1832, Charles Lyell, chapter VI, in Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, volume II, London: John Murray, →OCLC, page 94

   Herds of wandering reindeer are frequently seen, and may even hold up the train while they cross the unfenced line to reach their feeding grounds.

   1958 December 28, M. D. Greville and H. A. Vallance, “Sweden's Inland Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 829

   Reindeer are well suited to the taiga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a thermogradient between body core and the environment of up to 100 degrees, in part because of insulation provided by their fur, and in part because of counter-current vascular heat exchange systems in their legs and nasal passages.

   2013 March, Nancy Langston, “Mining the Boreal North”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 2, archived from the original on 13 Apr 2016, page 98

2. pluralbiologyAny species, subspecies, ecotype, or other scientific grouping of such animals.

present singular third person reindeers · participle present reindeering · participle past reindeered · past reindeered

1. To herd or farm reindeer