Mongoose (plural: mongooses or, rarely, mongeese) is a name for any member of the family Herpestidae (although also used for some members of Eupleridae), a family of small, cat-like carnivores.

The word mongoose is derived from the Marathi name mangus (pronounced as "mongoose"), perhaps ultimately from Dravidian (cf. Telugu mungeesa, Kannada mungisi). The form of the English name (since 1698) was altered to its -goose ending by folk-etymology. It has no etymological connection with the word goose.

For more information about Mongoose, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.