Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A common European bird of the subfamily Sylviinæ or warblers, the Sylvia hippolais (Latham), S. rufa (Bechstein), now Phylloscopus rufus: a near relative of the willow-warbler and wood-warbler, which it much resembles.
- To utter the notes of the chiff-chaff.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) A species of European warbler (Sylvia hippolais); -- called also
chip-chap , andpettychaps .
Examples
“People skim those ‘chiff-chaff’ little notes and forget them the next moment.”
“During the five years I spent at school at Bradfield I would usually, towards the end of March, receive a postcard from him saying simply, 'I have heard the chiff-chaff.”
“(And there's a chiff-chaff, soft, and slim, and brown.)”
“Laugh! cries the chiff-chaff all day long, careless of elaboration if he can give his message, effectually cutting the silence with his two small notes like silver shears.”
“I have an uneasy feeling that all last year the chiff-chaff was asking himself why I wrote every day.”
“Indeed, I think, perhaps, it would have been wiser of me to have left the chiff-chaff out of it altogether.”
“I do not want an explanation of a thrush's song or a nightingale's, but why does a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long?”
“In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note.”
“Listen to the chiff-chaff ingeminating the familiar unchanging call and message of spring.”
“The chiff-chaff, the common warbler of this moorland district, was now abundant, more so than anywhere else in England; two or three were flitting about among the alder leaves within a few feet of my head, and”
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chiff-chaff.
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