Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several small, often brightly colored, aquatic or semiaquatic salamanders of the family Salamandridae of North America and Eurasia that typically breed in water but spend part of their lives on land.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A tailed batrachian; an animal of the genus Triton in a broad sense, as T. cristatus, the great warty or crested newt, or T. (Lissotriton) punctatus, the common smooth newt; an eft; an asker; a triton.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of small aquatic salamanders. The common British species are the crested newt (Triton cristatus) and the smooth newt (Lophinus punctatus). In America, Diemictylus viridescens is one of the most abundant species.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a small lizard-like amphibian in the family Salamandridae that lives in the water as an adult.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun small usually bright-colored semiaquatic salamanders of North America and Europe and northern Asia

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English neute, from a neute, alteration of an eute, variant of evete, from Old English efete.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the older forms ewt, from euft, from eft, Old English efete. The n comes from hearing “an ewt” as “a newt”; compare apron, nickname, orange, daffodil, and, for a similar phenomenon, trickle.

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Examples

Comments

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  • I have a pet newt named Tiny. I named him Tiny because he's my newt.

    February 22, 2009

  • *groan*

    February 22, 2009

  • "She turned me into a newt."

    -Monty Python's Holy Grail

    February 22, 2009

  • "...I got better."

    February 23, 2009

  • Yes!

    February 23, 2009