panda

panda — noun

1. a large mammal with a thick body, round black ears, and a white face marked by b

1.nounA2
Definition

a large mammal with a thick body, round black ears, and a white face marked by black patches around the eyes; pandas live in the mountain forests of central China and feed mainly on bamboo.

Example

The Chen family travelled to Chengdu to see giant pandas in the wild.

common collocation: giant panda

Two baby pandas were born at the Taipei Zoo last spring.

plural form: pandas

Common collocations
  • giant panda
  • baby panda / panda cub
  • pandas eat bamboo
  • see / watch pandas
  • endangered panda
Synonyms
  • giant panda

    the formal full name; used to avoid confusion with the red panda

  • panda bear

    informal, mostly American; not used in scientific or zoo contexts

Grammar Patterns

a/the panda

pandas (plural)

Usage Note

Often called a giant panda when distinguished from the red panda, a smaller reddish-brown animal that is unrelated despite the shared name. In everyday English, panda alone almost always means the giant panda.

Common Mistakes

I saw a panda bear at the zoo' is fine in casual speech, but ❌ 'panda bears' as a formal name is wrong.
I saw a giant panda at the zoo.
the official common name is panda or giant panda, not panda bear.
Pandas eat bamboos.
Pandas eat bamboo.
bamboo is usually uncountable when referring to the plant as food.

Word family

  • pandas
    nounA2
  • giant panda
    nounA2
  • red panda
    nounB1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

In modern English, panda by itself almost always means the giant panda — the famous black-and-white animal from China. Giant panda is the full, more formal name and is preferred in news reports, scientific writing, and zoo signs, especially when the context might otherwise be unclear. Panda bear is an informal, mainly American label; it is common in everyday speech but is avoided in zoology because pandas, although now classified with the bear family, were long treated as a separate group. Red panda refers to a completely different animal — a small, raccoon-like mammal with reddish-brown fur and a long ringed tail. So a parent might say to a child, 'Look at the panda eating bamboo!' but a wildlife guide will say, 'The giant panda is endangered, while the red panda lives higher up in the mountains.'

panda ↗giant pandapanda bearred panda

Common collocations

Nouns

  • panda cub
  • panda enclosure
  • panda reserve
  • panda diplomacy
  • panda population

Phrases

  • giant panda
  • endangered panda
  • save the pandas
  • pandas in captivity

Prepositions

  • panda in (a zoo / the wild)
  • panda from (China)

Etymology

NepaliFrenchEnglish

Panda came into English in the 1820s through French, where it was first used for what we now call the red panda — a small Himalayan mammal. The word probably traces back to a Nepali name for that animal. Around 1900, Western scientists working in central China described the much larger black-and-white bear-like creature and gave it the name giant panda, because they thought it was related to the smaller animal. Modern DNA studies show the two species are actually only distantly related, but the shared name has stayed.