Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A large flightless sea bird (Pinguinus impennis) formerly common on northern Atlantic coasts but extinct since the middle of the 19th century.
Wiktionary
- n. A large auk, Pinguinus impennis.
WordNet 3.0
- n. large flightless auk of rocky islands off northern Atlantic coasts; extinct.
Examples
“Native to islands of the North Atlantic, it might have escaped total eradication by humans if not for the fact that, unlike puffins and murrelets, the great auk was flightless.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘great auk’.
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penguins
just penguins,their names,and
anything to do with penguin like a
place in Tasmania,a nun,aeronautics,
penguin association,what films remind you of penguins? One in 50,000 turn ou...emperor penguin, Adelie penguin, chinstrap penguin, little penguin, Humboldt penguin, macaroni penguin, Spheniscidae, great auk, nun, a coastal town in..., aeronautics, Pygoscelis adeliae and 72 more...
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That's just great!
great plains, great lakes, great ape, great auk, great circle, great divide, great skua, great lark, great Caesar's gh..., great wall of China, great Gatsby, The Glitter Band ... and 11 more...
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Prehistoric and Extinct Birds
Does not include "protobirds," which are still dinosaurs (and thus are left on my Dinosaurs list). (They are tagged as such for easier identification, though surely I missed a lot of them.)
aquatilavipes, jibeinia, ichthyornis, iberomesornis, hesperornis, eoalulavis, enantiornithes, phororhacos, otogornis, confuciusornis, gastornis, diatryma and 404 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (G)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
gable, gaia, gala, galaxy, gallows, gambol, garden, garland, garnet, gauntlet, gazebo, gazelle and 105 more...
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Extinct Animals
Some extinct animals, prehistoric and 'modern'
dodo, megatherium, auroch, woolly mammoth, mastodon, quagga, smilodon, elephant bird, passenger pigeon, great auk, tarpan, thylacine and 21 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for great auk.
treeseed The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis, formerly in genus Alca) is an extinct bird. It was the only species in the genus Pinguinus - flightless giant auks from the Atlantic - to survive until modern times, but it has been extinct since the mid-19th century. It was also known as garefowl or gairfowl (from the Old Norse geirfugl, meaning "spear-bird", a reference to the shape of its beak), or penguin (before the birds known today under that name were called so).
In the past, the Great Auk was found in great numbers on islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland and Great Britain, but it was eventually hunted to extinction.
_Wikipedia
Jan 30, 2008