petrel

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“
"You look a regular stormy petrel, and seem as if you wanted to spread your wings and fly I only wish I could, sir," I cried, laughing at his likening me to a "Mother Carey's chicken," as the petrel is familiarly termed, a number of them then hovering about the ship astern.

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Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun Any of numerous black, gray, or white sea birds of the order Procellariiformes, especially the storm petrel.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (8)

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

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Examples (50)

  • I at once recognised it as a common storm-petrel (Pvocellavia fielagica). —  MY STRANGE PETS AND Other Memories of Country Life
  • Mr Robert Service of Maxwelltown told me I should have tried to feed it by tickling its bill with a feather smeared with oil; also that the common storm-petrel is, of five scarcer species frequenting our coasts, most rarely found inland Teal. —  MY STRANGE PETS AND Other Memories of Country Life
  • Hawaii's change is happening now so can be taken down before the nesting season of the dark-rumped petrel, a volcano-dwelling endangered bird. —  Yahoo! News: Technology News
  • Hawaii's change is happening now so analog transmission towers can be taken down before the nesting season of the dark-rumped petrel, a volcano-dwelling endangered bird. —  The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal:Today's Headlines
  • "You look a regular stormy petrel, and seem as if you wanted to spread your wings and fly I only wish I could, sir," I cried, laughing at his likening me to a "Mother Carey's chicken," as the petrel is familiarly termed, a number of them then hovering about the ship astern. —  Afloat at Last A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Perhaps alteration of earlier pitteral (perhaps influenced by Saint Peter walking on the water, from the fact that the bird flies so close to the water as to appear to be walking on it).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly also peterel; from French pétrel, a petrel, literally ‘little Peter,’ ‘Peterkin’ (German Petersvogel, ‘Peter's bird’), so called because it seems to walk on the sea, like Peter (Mat. xiv. 29), from Middle Latin *Petrellus, diminutive of Late Latin Petrus, Peter, from Greek Πέτρος, Peter, literally ‘rock’ (see Mat. xvi. 18): see pier.
 

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/ˈpɛtrɛl/
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