penguin

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
Philip Seymour Hoffman as the penguin is a great choice -- I think he and Poison Ivy would make a great team.

View all »
Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Any of various stout flightless marine birds of the family Spheniscidae, of cool regions of the Southern Hemisphere, having flipperlike wings and webbed feet adapted for swimming and diving, and short scalelike feathers that are white in front and black on the back.
  2. noun Obsolete The great auk.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

Penguin has been looked up 268 times, favorited 0 times, listed 41 times, and commented on 3 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Possibly from Welsh pen gwyn, White Head (name of an island in Newfoundland), great auk : pen, chief, head + gwynn, white; see weid- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Formerly also pinguin, pengwin (cf. French pingoin, pingouin = Dutch pinguin = German pinguin = Swedish Danish pingvin, a penguin, = Russian pingvinŭ, an auk, from English): origin uncertain. According to one view from Welsh pen gwen, ‘white head,’ the name being given to the auk in ref. to the large white spot before the eye, and subsequently transferred to a penguin. According to another view, penguin or pinguin is a corruption (in some manner left unexplained) of English dial. penwing or pinwing, the pinion or outer joint of the wing of a fowl (from pen, quill, + wing): this name being supposed to have been given orig. to the great auk (in allusion to its rudimentary wings) and afterward transferred to the penguins.
  2. Also pinguin (New Latin Pinguin); origin obscure.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/ˈpɛngwɪn/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a month.

Recent Lookups

Happy · Groaned · languid · juggernaut · onomatopoeia

Recent Favorites

airship · cloud-shadows · ombrophobous · turncoat · metaplasm

Recent Pronunciations

milosrdenstvi · lichen-covered · futon · sagacity · monoragngocious