All rabbits are baby rabbits.
English and French both lost their early words for ‘rabbit’ because they sounded rude, and replaced them with words for ‘baby rabbit’.
The source of the problem, in both cases, was the Old French word coniz, which became French connin and also, thanks to the Norman invasion, English coney.1
Now coney (or cony) is usually pronounced to rhyme with ‘ ( Read more... )
I notice Anatoly Liberman examined the possible etymologies of rabbit in his Analytic Dictionary but Google Books breaks off before the discussion reaches any conclusion . . .
It is a bit peculiar that there does not seem to be a Germanic word, insofar as the Romans did bring them into Britain AFAIK, and the Teutonic Knights subsequently spread them throughout the German and Slav lands. But from Liberman's discussion, maybe it's been there all along in Walloon robett and French rabouillère; maybe the OED was right that it started out as a Flemish word.
After my first foray into Google Books I found to my embarrassment that I had the 1969 reprint of EETS O.S. 160, The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, sitting in my bookshelf. Unfortunately they abbreviated the verses of Leviticus and skipped XI.5 altogether. I have one work on the glosses but not the edition that Google Books shows only glimpses from. I mucked around with Bosworth-Toller on- and offline and didn't find it in either; but I am not 100% sure that means it isn't there somewhere. Some checking around established that the Vulgate usually spelled the word cirogrillus but that chirogrillus and chœrogyllius are also possible and chiroglesillus is the most correct form. So you may be able to track it down; you have better library access than me and new glosses keep turning up in different libraries.
M
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