Also -minck, -monk, -muk. [‘Prob. an Indian word’ (Bartlett); though the synonym chipping-squirrel (unless formed from chipmunk) suggests that ‘chipmonk’ may be an English compound.]
A species of ground-squirrel, the Striped Squirrel, Hackee, or Chipping Squirrel, of North America.
1830. Rutland Herald, 16 Nov., 3/4. Advt., I … should like to sell you one [a rifle] that I will warrant to kill a chipmuck 30 rods.
1832. New-Eng. Mag., II. March, 213. He is about the size of the squirrel we call the Chipmunk, and, like him and the American Flag, has thirteen stripes on his back.
1842. Mrs. Kirkland, Forest Life, I. 128 (Bartlett). The children were never tired of watching the vagaries of the little chipmonk as he glanced from branch to branch with almost the swiftness of light.
1854. P. B. St. John, Amy Moss, 13. I would not give a chip-minck’s tail for both our scalps, if we were circumvented by that noted rascal.
1865. J. G. Wood, Homes without H., i. 31. Among these burrowers, the Chipping Squirrel, or Hackee, or Chipmuck (Tamias Lysteri), is peculiarly conspicuous.
1878. Black, Green Past., xlv. 359. The merry little chipmunk.
1883. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xxxiii. 328. Hares and striped chipmonks cantered and scudded amidst the huckleberry bushes.
