civet

Etymology

From French civette, from Italian zibetto, from Medieval Latin zibethum, from Arabic زَبَاد (zabād).

noun

1. (countable) A carnivorous catlike animal, Civettictis civetta, that produces a musky secretion. It is two to three feet (30–90 cm) long, with black bands and spots on the body and tail.
2. (uncountable) The musky perfume produced by the animal.
   Your onely way to make a good pomander, is this. Take an ownce of the pureſt garden mould, clenſed and ſteeped ſeauen daies in change of motherleſſe roſe water, then take the beſt Labdanum, Benioine, both Storaxes, amber greece, and Ciuet, and muſke, incorporate them together, and work them into what form you pleaſe; this, if your breath bee not to valiant, will make you ſmell as ſweete as my Ladies dogge. 1607, [attributed to Thomas Tomkis], Lingva: Or The Combat of the Tongue, and the Five Senses for Superiority. A Pleasant Comœdie., London: Printed by G[eorge] Eld, for Simon Waterson, →OCLC, act IV, scene iii
   […]even if modest gestures of modernisation have slimmed down the ceremony, the chrism of unction is no longer perfumed with animal effluents—ambergris, musk and civet—and Andrew Lloyd Webber added to Handel and Elgar? 2023-05-06, Simon Schama, “Magic and Modernity”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 1
3. Any animal in the family Viverridae or the similar family Nandiniidae
4. (countable, US) Any of several species of spotted skunk, in the genus Spilogale.