Also 8 leming, 9 leeming. [a. Norw. lemming; other forms are Sw. lemmel, 16th c. lemb (pl. lemmar), Norw. lemende, limende; cf. Lapp. luomek (Ihre).]
1. A small arctic rodent, Myodes lemmus, of the family Muridæ, resembling a field-mouse, about 6 in. long, with a short tail, remarkable for its prolific character and its annual migrations to the sea. Also lemming-mouse, -rat.
[1555. Olaus Magnus, Hist. de Gentibus Septentr., XVIII. xx. 617. Quod … in Noruegia … euenit, scilicet vt bestiolæ quadrupedes, Lemmar, vel Lemmus dictæ, magnitudine soricis, pelle varia, per tempestates & repentinos imbres è cœlo decidant.]
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 727. There are certaine little Foure-footed beastes called Lemmar, or Lemmus, which in tempestuous and rainy weather, do seeme to fall down from the cloudes.
1713. Derham, Phys.-Theol., 56, note. A kind of Mice, (they call Leming…) in Norway, which eat up every green thing. They come in such prodigious Numbers, that they fancy them to fall from the Clouds.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., II. 283. The leming … is often seen to pour down in myriads from the Northern Mountains.
1802. Bingley, Anim. Biog. (1813), I. 376. The Lemming Rat. These animals feed entirely on vegetables.
1822–56. De Quincey, Confess. (1862), 69. Under such a compulsion does the leeming traverse its mysterious path.
1862. H. Marryat, Year in Sweden, II. 225. In Elfdal, says the chronicler, on the 2nd of August 1635 there rained from the sky a fall of lemmings.
1884. Gurney & Myers, in 19th Cent., May, 807. The migratory instinct that carries the lemming into the deep sea.
1884. Ayrshire Post, 22 July, 4/2. The Peers, like the lemmings, are periodically seized with a desire which conducts them in the direction of the sea, which is destined sooner or later to swallow them up.
2. Applied to other rodents of the same or allied genera. Banded lemming (Lydekker, Nat. Hist., 1894, III. 136); Collared or Snowy lemming (Riverside Nat. Hist., 1885, V. 105), Cuniculus torquatus.
