Zool. [a. Mexican Sp. coyote, ad. native Mexican coyotl.] The name, in Mexico and now in the United States, of the prairie- or barking-wolf (Canis latrans) of the Pacific slope of North America.
[a. 1628. Hernandez, Anim. Mex. Hist. (1651), 4.
1793. Pennant, Hist. Quadr. (ed. 3), I. 257. Coyotl seu vulpes Indica.]
1830. New Monthly Mag., XXVIII. 15. Hearing nought but the shrill cry of the coyote.
1850. B. Taylor, Eldorado, I. viii. 77. We saw the coyotes occasionally prowling along the margin of the slough.
1874. Coues, Birds N. W., 213. Several coyotés and a skunk.
1883. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xxii. 210. Wildest of all beasts is the wolf, and wildest of all wolves is the coyote.
transf. 1890. Chicago Advance, 20 Nov. Many ‘coyotes,’ as the Mexicans call the half breed population.
b. attrib. and Comb., as coyote-skin, -wolf; coyote-diggings, small shafts sunk by miners in California, compared to the holes of the coyote.
1857. J. D. Borthwick, Three Yrs. California, 138 (Bartlett). These coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay.
1872. C. King, Mountain. Sierra Nev., x. 219. Floor of pine, and Coyote-skin rug.
1874. Coues, Birds N. W., 382. At nightfall the coyoté-wolves … left their hiding places.
Hence Coyoting vbl. sb. (see quot.)
1867. A. Phillips, Mining of Gold & Silver, 164. This method of mining … is called coyoting, from the supposed resemblance of openings so made to the burrows of the coyote.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Coyoting, mining in irregular openings or burrows.
