Beast Mode: An Ark of Animal Words: A Vocabulary Bestiary: Animals That Behave as Verbs

Badgers, along with their cousins wolverines and fisher cats, have well-deserved reputations for being relentless hunters. If you've seen the viral honey badger video from a few years back, this will make perfect sense.

To buffalo someone is to bully them into doing something. Because it's also a type of animal and the name of a city in New York, it is in fact possible to make a grammatically correct sentence by writing buffalo eight times in a row. It's true!

Goldfish are a kind of carp, but are they famous for complaining? Actually, the name of the fish comes from the Latin , and the "complain" sense comes from the Latin verb carpere, meaning "to pluck" like a chicken. This also had a metaphorical meaning of slander, and the Norse word karp, meaning "brag," appears to have contributed to the modern English usage.

Cranes have long necks. That's why construction cranes took their name. And if you want to see something that's just out of view, like at a show when a tall person is in front of you, you crane your neck to see over or around them.

Ferrets are related to badgers, above, and are just as tenacious despite their smaller size. Because they're long and skinny, like their weasel cousins, they can fit into pretty tiny spaces in search of food. So to "ferret something out" is to discover it after a painstaking search.

When fish are landed, they flop around violently, trying to heave themselves back into the water. Flounder are a type of large, flat, bottom-dwelling fish whose shape makes these motions especially dramatic.

To gull someone is to trick or swindle them. You might know the word gullible, which refers to someone who will believe anything you tell them.

Hounds are types of dogs bred for different types of hunting, known for their keen sense of smell and dogged (sorry) determination in pursuing their prey.

A rook is a kind of crow, the chess piece shaped like a castle, and sometimes an abbreviation for "rookie" in a sports context. As a verb, deriving from the fact that rooks have been known to swoop down and grab things, usually food, from unwary people, it means "to cheat" or "to swindle."

Floating swans move smoothly and beautifully, their paddling feet invisible below the water. If an elegant person glides around aimlessly, like a model at a cocktail party, just content to be admired, they are swanning.

The name of the yak an Asian mountain ox, comes from the Tibetan gyog, but the sense of "chattering" or "empty talk" comes from yuck, slang for laughter. You may have seen the expression "just for yucks;" where the word imitates the sound of someone chuckling gleefully.