When applied to humans, neither the ferret nor the polecat has a particularly attractive connotation. The two-footed ferret names "someone who searches actively or persistently," while the pejorative (and now archaic) sense of polecat was once applied to a person considered vile or contemptible, especially a prostitute.

Meanwhile, among the four-footed set, ferret, which has an ancestor in the Latin term for "little thief," names "the partially domesticated, usually albino European polecat that is sometimes classified as its own separate species."

So what exactly is a polecat? That term is applied to critters the world over. It's used for the foul marten, the common polecat found in Eurasia and North Africa, for the zoril, a weasel native to southern Africa noted for emitting a fetid odor when disturbed, for the palm cat, the musk-secreting civet of southeastern Asia, and for the familiar, all-American skunk.

Word-lovers shouldn't be fooled into thinking they can ferret out some stinky link that gave birth to the shared label polecat. Although all these creatures are associated with odors (or malodors), the name polecat has its origin in their preferred food. It seems the animals' habit of feeding on poultry inspired some 14th-century observer to combine the Middle French word pol meaning "cock" with the Middle English word cat.

Thanks for "ferreting out" that information, gilly! I learn something new every morning.