lemming

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small, short-tailed rodent of Arctic and subarctic tundra regions

   The lemming tunneled beneath the snow in search of vegetation.

2. 2
   noun

   disparaging: a person who follows a group or leader uncritically, based on the false myth that lemmings deliberately follow one another to their deaths

   The columnist unfairly dismissed the voters as political lemmings.

Borrowed through Danish or Norwegian lemming from Old Norse forms such as læmingr, perhaps ultimately from Sami. The figurative sense rests on a popular but false story that migrating lemmings intentionally commit mass suicide; their real population movements can be hazardous but are not deliberate.

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