rabbitrabbit

The story

Inherited from Middle English rabet, rabette, from Anglo-Latin rabettus, from dialectal Old French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (‘rabbit, seal’), of uncertain origin; possibly some imitative verb, maybe robben, rubben (‘to rub’) is used here to allude to a characteristic of the animal.1uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain. Related forms include Middle French rabouillet (‘baby rabbit’) and in French rabot (‘plane’)), coming via Walloon Old French (reflected nowadays as Walloon robète (‘rabbit’)), from Middle Dutch robbe ("rabbit; seal"; whence Modern Dutch rob (‘rabbit", also "seal’)); also Middle Low German robbe, rubbe (‘rabbit’), and the later German Low German Rubbe, Robb (‘seal’), West Frisian robbe (‘seal’), Saterland Frisian Rubbe (‘seal’), North Frisian rob (‘seal’), borrowed into German Robbe (‘seal’). Meant "young rabbit" until the 19th c., when it came to replace the original general term cony, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny, "vulva" (compare ass and donkey). Note that there is no inherited Germanic word for rabbits, since hares are the only leporids native to Britain (as with all of Europe outside the Iberian Peninsula and southwest France); rabbits were introduced from France in the late Middle Ages, likely after the Norman Invasion. (Fittingly, hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic.)