The Difference Between a Possum and an Opossum

Possums look like scraggly, ratty creatures — or at least that’s what I used to think. You see them trundling across roads at nighttime, sharp-toothed bundles of fur with a long naked tail trailing behind. But one day, I visited a museum that had pelts of dozens of different animals in a hands-on display. Some were soft, some had coarse guard hairs, and then I petted the possum fur almost as a joke. Like, how bad is this going to feel. It was heavenly. Possum fur remains, to this day, the softest fur I have ever touched.

I say all this not to praise the virtues of the poor misunderstood possum, although there are many. I say it to point out that, as a resident of North America who is quite familiar with this animal, I call it a possum. So does everybody else. You don’t say to your neighbour “ugh, my dog rolled in with a dead Didelphis virginiana yesterday;” you say, “my dog found a dead possum.”

Now that we’ve established that, we have to talk about another animal: the Australian Trichosurus vulpecula, or common brushtail possum. Both possums are marsupials, both live in and near cities, and both are commonly called, well, possums.

So what’s an opossum?

The name possum is a shortened version of opossum, and the word opossum comes from a Virginia Algonquian word that was written by colonizers as apossoun or opassom, according to Merriam-Webster. (The exact original word is unknown.)

The North American animal is called the “Virginia opossum” in formal contexts, and “possum” nearly everywhere else.

Meanwhile, the “o” seems to have gotten lost somewhere between Virginia and Australia, and the formal English name of the Australian animal is the “brushtail possum.” Merriam-Webster points out that if you want to refer to the southern hemisphere animals specifically, there is a word for them: phalangers.

There are, then, people who will get pedantic and say that North America has opossums and Australia has possums, but this is only true if you’re talking about fancy academic language (in which case, you might as well use the scientific names). Opossum is one correct name for the scraggly-looking-but-actually-soft rat-tailed creature that crosses highways at night, but it is not the only correct name. As the dictionary makes clear, both names are correct for both animals.