Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "phalanger" [pha•lan•ger]

  • Any of various small arboreal marsupials of the family Phalangeridae, of Australia and adjacent islands, having a long tail and dense woolly fur and including the cuscus and the flying phalanger. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "phalanger" in a sentence
  • "It was a female, and though not exactly of the same species, much resembled the remarkable animal which Mons. de Buffon hath described by the name of phalanger."
  • "The one is distinctly a true squirrel, a rodent of the rodents, externally adapted to an arboreal existence; the other is equally a true phalanger, a marsupial of the marsupials, which has independently undergone on his own account very much the same adaptation, for very much the same reasons."
  • "The vulpine phalanger does duty for a fox; the fat and sleepy little dormouse phalanger takes the place of a European dormouse."