norway rat
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.86 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The brown rat (Rattus norvegicus).
Etymology
The common name was popularised (and perhaps coined) by English naturalist John Berkenhout, in his Outlines of the Natural History of Great Britain (1769). Berkenhout believed the species migrated to England from Norwegian ships in 1728; he is also responsible for the scientific name.