baudrons

Note: The word first occurs in "The Twa Mice," a version of the Aesopian fable of the city mouse and country mouse by Robert Henryson, written perhaps in the 1480's. The comparisons with Irish and Scottish Gaelic words adduced in the Oxford English Dictionary (1st edition) are remote both semantically and formally. The Scottish National Dictionary's suggestion that the word is compounded of bawd "hare" (unattested before the 19th century) and ron, supposedly imitative of a cat's purring, seems extremely improbable. The uncommon Middle English word badde, "cat (domestic or wild)," is perhaps relevant, though the final element of baudrons, if it is a compound, remains obscure.