"Mokesin" or "moleskin"? (Was: CHAPTER DISCUSSIONS: DH7)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179053

Carol: If you read the list from your e-mail, please ignore the
unfinished version of this message (now deleted from the list itself)
that I accidentally sent! Don't know what key I touched to do that!

Carol earlier:
> > Just wondering here: Does the Bloomsbury edition say "moleskin" 
(like Hagrid's coat in PoA)? The American edition says "mokeskin"
> 
zanooda responded: 
> Hi, Carol! The only difference is that in the British edition it is
"Mokeskin" (starts with an upper-case M), and in the American edition
it is just "mokeskin" :-). In the Russian translation it is "donkey
skin" (or should it be "ass's skin"?), which doesn't make much sense,
IMO, even though I know that "moke" can mean "donkey". Personally I
would never doubt that JKR meant Moke from the "Fantastic Beasts"
here, if not for the "furry" aspect of this supposedly lizard skin,
which confuses me even today :-).

> zanooda, wondering if JKR forgot her own description of Mokes in the
"Fantastic Beasts".
>
Carol responds:

Thanks! Which makes me wonder (again) whether Hagrid's *moleskin*
overcoat in PoA (Am. ed. 112) was originally *mokeskin* but changed by
a copyeditor who thought it was a typo. How did the Russian translator
handle that one? (It's in "Talons and Tea Leaves" right before Hagrid
tells the students to open their books, which no one knows how to do.)
I seem to recall "moleskin" used elsewhere to describe that coat,
which would not, of course, have to shrink to prevent anyone from
stealing it. Which brings us to whether moleskin, if that's the right
word, is the "furry" cotton fabric used for clothing or the skin of
several thousand moles made into a coat. The former, I hope! 

BTW, I sent zanooda a link to a moleskin Sorting Hat (made of moleskin
fabric, not the skin of moles!), which I thought might resemble the
fabric of Hagrid's moleskin overcoat. Here it is for the enjoyment of
other list members who care about such minutiae:

http://www.villagehatshop.com/harry-potter_sorting-hat_movie-version.html

But the capital "m" in "Mokeskin" in the Bloomsbury edition and the
repeated use of that word does suggest that "mokeskin" is the right
word and refers to the shrinking silver-green (Slytherin-colored)
lizard of FB, and we can only wonder how even JKR (who thinks that a
horned toad is an amphibian) could think that a lizard would be
furry--or why Hagrid would buy a purse in Slytherin colors.

Carol, reluctantly counting her missent post in today's quota and
wondering whether JKR knows that "moke" really does mean "donkey" in
English