How to Use civet in a Sentence

civet

noun
Definition of civetnext
  • The virus originated in bats and is thought to have passed through palm civets on its way to people.
    — Robert Langreth, Bloomberg.com, 8 May 2020
  • Each civet has its own wooden cage, which is cleaned every three days.
    — Mallory Locklear, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2014
  • One of the most coveted varieties comes from the feces of an Asian palm civet.
    — Caroline Picard, Good Housekeeping, 3 Dec. 2018
  • Pure civet is a crude, buttery-yellow paste that turns darker with age.
    — Mallory Locklear, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2014
  • Most of us didn’t ride camels, didn’t eat monkeys, didn’t handle live bats or civet cats in the marketplace.
    — National Geographic, 16 June 2020
  • In life, the carnivore was about the size of a bobcat and probably behaved like a civet or fossa.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 June 2023
  • Her menagerie over the years included a warthog named Grunter and a civet fond of being sprinkled with Old Spice shaving lotion.
    — James R. Hagerty, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2018
  • With the spread of the coronavirus, China’s government has banned the trade and consumption of wildlife such as civet cats and bamboo rats.
    — Anna Fifield, Washington Post, 24 Aug. 2020
  • By 2007, researchers were raising alarms once more about the sale and consumption of animals like civets.
    — Melody Schreiber, The New Republic, 29 Jan. 2020
  • In the meantime the quest for a thoroughly humane way of harvesting civet continues.
    — Mallory Locklear, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2014
  • The brew’s distinction has to do with how the beans are sourced—from the feces of the civet, a coffee-loving catlike animal found in the wild, whose digestion process is said to improve the taste.
    — Charles Passy, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2017
  • In 2003, at the height of SARS epidemic, which is believed to have originated in civets, the government issued a temporary ban on the wildlife trade.
    — National Geographic, 30 Jan. 2020
  • On the high end, Li says, only the rich can afford soup made with palm civet (a cat-size mammal native to jungles throughout Southeast Asia), fried cobra, or braised bear paw.
    — National Geographic, 30 Jan. 2020
  • But when these viruses leap into a new species—whether a pangolin or a civet or a human—the result can be severe, sometimes deadly, sickness.
    — Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2020
  • Bats are the likely original hosts; thousands of captive civet cats suspected of carrying the virus were killed.
    — Alberto Lucas LÓpez, National Geographic, 17 June 2021
  • Most of these viruses were transferred from bats to an intermediate host, like a palm civet or camel, before making their way to humans.
    — New York Times, 17 Jan. 2021
  • Its staff recently welcomed a newborn black wildebeest, crowned lemur and an Owston’s civet kitten, which was hand-reared by keepers — a first-time feat, according to the zoo.
    — Benjamin Vanhoose, PEOPLE.com, 7 Nov. 2019
  • Of those species, the following were judged suitable to be kept as a pet: Sika deer, agile wallaby, tammar wallaby, llama and Asian palm civet, the study found.
    — Jacqueline Howard, CNN, 24 May 2018
  • Overall, Poust notes, Diegoaelurus was probably closer in appearance to a civet or a fossa.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Mar. 2022
  • That animal probably transmitted the virus to an intermediate host, like a mink, pangolin, civet or racoon dog, which then passed the virus to a human.
    — Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Apr. 2021
  • Inside the civet's digestive tract, the beans are fermented and broken down, then the coffee is harvested from the civet's feces, washed thoroughly and roasted.
    — Josie Goodrich, USA TODAY, 7 July 2023
  • The National Forestry and Grassland Administration announced that 54 types of wildlife, civets included, could be consumed and sold, as long as they were raised on farms.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2020
  • The civet, a small catlike mammal found throughout Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, marks its territory by secreting a distinctive scent from its anal glands.
    — Antonia Noori Farzan, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Feb. 2020
  • China, a country that once considered beef as exotic an ingredient as palm civet and water deer, has been the driver of that growth in recent decades.
    — David Fickling | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 24 Nov. 2019
  • But the civets proved to be intermediate hosts, and its natural host was later identified as horseshoe bats.
    — David Quammen, New York Times, 25 July 2023
  • The prohibition of caged civets is specifically singled out in the SAN guidelines for coffee in Indonesia.
    — National Geographic, 29 Apr. 2016
  • Some sell more unusual fare, including live snakes, turtles and cicadas, guinea pigs, bamboo rats, badgers, hedgehogs, otters, palm civets, even wolf cubs.
    — Steven Lee Myers, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Jan. 2020
  • To many, the region’s burgeoning wildlife markets—which sell a wide range of animals such as bats, civets, pangolins, badgers and crocodiles—are perfect viral melting pots.
    — Jane Qiu, Scientific American, 11 Mar. 2020
  • In early 2003, the government temporarily banned all wild animal sales after the outbreak of SARS, which studies indicate moved from bats to humans via palm civets, a mainstay of the meat trade.
    — Bydennis Normile, science.org, 29 Mar. 2023
  • That disease was ultimately traced to a coronavirus that jumped from bats to Asian palm civets, a catlike creature prized as a delicacy in southern China, and then to humans involved in the wildlife trade there.
    — Steven Lee Myers, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Jan. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'civet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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