Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An Old World thrush (Turdus pilaris) having gray and reddish-brown plumage.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The common English name of a European thrush, Turdus pilaris, of the family Turdidæ, about 10 inches long, of a reddish-brown color, with blackish tail and ashy head, a winter resident in Great Britain, breeding far north. It has many other names, besides the dialectal variants of fieldfare, derived from its color, cries, movements, etc., some of them shared by related species of British thrushes.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) a small thrush (Turdus pilaris) which breeds in northern Europe and winters in Great Britain. The head, nape, and lower part of the back are ash-colored; the upper part of the back and wing coverts, chestnut; -- called also
fellfare .
WordNet 3.0
- n. medium-sized Eurasian thrush seen chiefly in winter
Etymologies
- Origin uncertain, perhaps present in Old English. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English feldfare, from Old English feldeware, error for *feldefare : perhaps feld, field; see field + *-fare, goer (from faran, to go; see per-2 in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Stephen Moss on one of the most beautiful winter visitors, the fieldfare”
“• Large flocks of chaffinch with some bramblings in woodland, abundant redwing and fieldfare in hawthorn hedges, and rare waxwings appearing in unusually high numbers.”
The Guardian: British wildlife benefits from return to 'traditional' seasonal weather
“They noticed a fieldfare, half-frozen, and the father took up a stone idly and threw it at the bird, possibly not meaning to hit it.”
“He said he had never forgotten how the body of the fieldfare felt in his hand: the memory had always haunted him.”
“The fieldfare fell dead, and the child Thomas picked it up and it was as light as a feather, all skin and bone, practically starved.”
“The chack of the first fieldfare of the winter came close behind the last swallow of the summer, and we were in the thick of it.”
“She neither shrieked nor fainted; but no poor January fieldfare was ever colder, no ice-house more dank with perspiration, than she was then.”
“The former, called by the Chilenos "el Turco," is as large as a fieldfare, to which bird it has some alliance; but its legs are much longer, tail shorter, and beak stronger: its colour is a reddish brown.”
“The collyrion (or fieldfare) feeds on the same food as the owsel; is of the same size as the above mentioned birds; and is trapped usually in the winter.”
“Long afterwards he used to say that every scene in and about Heanor was photographed with absolute distinctness on his brain, and he loved to recall the long days that he had spent in following the plough, chopping turnips for the cattle, tramping over the snow-covered fields after red-wing and fieldfare, collecting acorns for the swine, or hunting through the barns for eggs.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fieldfare’.
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birds
birds with singular names from
at least 9 English dictionariesaasvogel, aberdevine, accentor, accipiter, aepyornis, agami, albatross, alcatras, alcid, alcidine, amadavat, amokura and 1056 more...
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be-tween the wings
monoplane, wheatear, synallaxine, fritillary, nightjar, morning-a-jar, evening-jarred, fieldfare, centre, accipiter, motmot, geometrid and 43 more...
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1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and Hi...
Bizarre stuff found there. Note that archaic terms are occasionally not spelled the way we spell them today; in these cases I've tried to link to the modernized spelling (where known) on the word p...
musk-bull, urus, zebu, cameleopard, ratel, suricate, wombach, saragoy, murine, ternate, coach dog, comforter and 91 more...
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Dr. Jamieson's Birds
A rich list of Scottish bird (nick)names and related terms cited in Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841.
stone-chatter, clocharet, bowger, coulter-neb, branchers, brissel-cock, turkey-cock, brongie, bubblyjock, polliecock, bullfit, bullfrench and 220 more...
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for words
based upon per- indo-european root
turnverein, veer, frump, far, per, paramount, paramour, parget, parterre, parvenu, perissodactyl, palanquin and 133 more...
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Still More Bird Wirds
A work in progress....Birds from around the world (other than endemic to North America).
barbet, hornbill, trogon, bee-eater, bristlehead, wren-babbler, stubtail, blackeye, bush warbler, cassowary, bowerbird, bird-of-paradise and 722 more...
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birds
oyster-catcher, curlew, chough, stonechat, corncraik, kittiwake, shearwater, fulmar, gannet, corncrake, fieldfare, wren and 4 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fieldfare.
chained_bear Image can be found here. Aug 25, 2008
slumry Nice. So it's a bird, not a farmer's lunch. I devoutly hope it is not a farmer's lunch. :( Jul 26, 2007