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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. 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. n. Obsolete The great auk.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The great auk, Alca impennis; the original sense.
  2. n. Any species of the family Spheniscidæ or Aptenodytidæ. (See Spheniscidæ for technical characters.) Penguins are remarkably distinguished from all other birds by the reduction of the wings to mere flippers, covered with scaly feathers (see Impennes, Squamipennes), used for swimming under water, but unfit for flight. The feathers of the upper parts have also broad flattened shafts and slight webs, being thus like scales; the feet are webbed and four-toed, though the hind toe is very short; the tail is short and stiff; the general form is stout and ungainly. On land the birds stand nearly erect and waddle clumsily, but they are agile and graceful in the water. They feed on fish and other animal food, and congregate on shore to breed in penguineries of great extent. Penguins are confined to the southern hemisphere, especially about Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, and islands in high southern latitudes, coming nearest the equator on the west coast of South America, as in the case of Humboldt's penguin of Peru. There are more than a dozen species, referable to three leading types. Those of the genus Aptenodytes are the largest, standing about three feet high, and have a slender bill. The name Patagonian penguin, applied to these, covers two species or varieties—a larger, the emperor penguin, A. forsteri or imperator, and a smaller, A. pennanti or rex. (See emperor.) Jackass-penguins, so called from braying, are medium-sized or rather small, with stout bill, as Spheniscus demersus of South Africa and S. magellanicus of Patagonia. (See cut at Spheniscus.) None of the foregoing are crested; but the members of the genus Eudyptes (or Catarractes), as E. chrysocome or chrysolophus, known as rock-hoppers and macaronis, have curly yellow plumes on each side of the head. (See cut at Eudyptes.) Other medium-sized penguins are Pygoscelis tæniata, P. antarctica, P. antipoda, and Dasyrhamphus adeliæ. The smallest penguin, about a foot long, is Eudyptila minor of Australian and New Zealand shores. The largest, which was taller than a man usually is, is a fossil species named Palæeudyptes antarcticus, from the New Zealand Tertiary.
  3. n. The wild pineapple, Bromelia Pinguin. Its ovoid succulent berry yields a cooling juice much used in fevers.

Wiktionary

  1. n. slang A nun (because of the black and white habit).
  2. n. juggling A type of catch where the palm of the hand is facing towards the leg with the arm stretched downward, resembling the flipper of a penguin.
  3. n. botany A spiny bromeliad with egg-shaped fleshy fruit.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Zoöl.) Any bird of the order Impennes, or Ptilopteri. They are covered with short, thick feathers, almost scalelike on the wings, which are without true quills. They are unable to fly, but use their wings to aid in diving, in which they are very expert. See King penguin, under jackass.
  2. n. (Bot.) The egg-shaped fleshy fruit of a West Indian plant (Bromelia Pinguin) of the Pineapple family; also, the plant itself, which has rigid, pointed, and spiny-toothed leaves, and is used for hedges.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. short-legged flightless birds of cold southern especially Antarctic regions having webbed feet and wings modified as flippers

Etymologies

  1. Unknown origin. Possibly from Welsh pen ("head") and gwyn ("white"), or from Latin pinguis ("fat"). See citations and the Wikipedia page. (Wiktionary)
  2. Possibly from Welsh pen gwyn, White Head (name of an island in Newfoundland), great auk : pen, chief, head + gwynn, white. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

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Comments

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  • leaden Yes. Linkified, with the caveat that it’s more of a those-dumb-scientists-are-wasting-our-money humor piece than an actual news item (e.g., the subtitle is “Happy Feet Penguin Goes Missing... Nom Nom Nom Nom”, and the linked sources cited are an editorial and an article in The Sun. The bit where they shove the penguin down the ramp is a little funny). You might find more useful information here. Sep 25, 2011

  • sionnach Would this be the appropriate place to mention the headline I saw recently on "Headlines that suck"?
    Pampered 'Happy Feet' Penguin "Eaten by Killer Whale" Sep 25, 2011

  • yarb I'm sure he will live Apsley ever after. Sep 25, 2011

  • bilby Apsley is so pleased. Sep 24, 2011

  • Dan337 Ah. I found a thinner one (“”), propping up a table leg. With some cropping, your fledgy friend can use this for his visa:

     .+.
    /( )\
    -- -- Sep 24, 2011

  • Dan337 Shirley bilby: Here’s a non-breaking space: “ ”. I’ve been using them for indentation ever since we lost the blockquote tag. (It’s a flimsy substitute therefor, but adequate for short lines that won’t wrap.)

    Here’s Apsley looking almost into the camera:

     .+.
    /( )\
    -- --

    (I’ve got some other widths around here somewhere . . . .) Sep 24, 2011

  • bilby No I don't. Apsley was named after the brave Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

    And stop calling me Shirley. Sep 21, 2011

  • ruzuzu Bilby--surely you don't mean Rick Apsley. Sep 21, 2011

  • ruzuzu Thank you yarb--I'm sure most people would assume CSP was the evil one. But we know better, don't we? Sep 21, 2011

  • bilby Apsley. He says he is horizontal quite some of the time and that Melville should have looked harder. Sep 21, 2011

  • yarb What is its name? Sep 20, 2011

  • yarb Perhaps Melville was looking at penguins the wrong way, i.e. horizontally.

    n.b. that is a handsome, and very symmetrical, penguin. Sep 20, 2011

  • bilby A bit lopsided, perhaps due to the way Bugnik displays photrealistic ASCII Sphenisciformes, but very symmetrical. Sep 20, 2011

  • bilby .+.
    /( )\
    -- -- Sep 20, 2011

  • bilby All the penguins in my neighbourhood are very symmetrical. Sep 20, 2011

  • yarb Sometimes I think of Melville as the evil twin of Charles Sanders Peirce. Sep 20, 2011

  • yarb Haven't you noticed how awfully asymmetric penguins are? Sep 20, 2011

  • bilby Hardly as symmetrical? Sep 20, 2011

  • yarb "What outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical, they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival nor Lent; without exception the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yet discovered by man. Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeed possessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan, and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo."

    - Melville, The Encantadas, Sketch Third Sep 20, 2011

  • dontcry The Penguins are a hockey team from Pittsburgh.

    Go Steelers. Feb 1, 2009

  • vanishedone The great auk, now extinct.

    Also, says the O.E.D., a rare verb meaning 'to publish as a Penguin book'. Jan 31, 2009

  • bilby All hail the emperor Nov 23, 2007

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‘penguin’ has been looked up 3839 times, loved by 5 people, added to 57 lists, commented on 23 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.