CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa)

These little animals eat coffee beans, digest them, crap them out. And we humans actually pay a very high premium to then um... grind and drink those beans in coffee. Seriously.

In the domain of finance, however, the term refers to a group of countries at generally the same level of economic development. There are a few of these groups that get put together into clever little names. There are the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). There's the EAGLEs (which doesn't stand for individual country names, but instead represents "Emerging and Growth Leading Economies").

Then there's the CIVETS. It stands for Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa.