Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various small, olive-gray North American flycatchers of the genus Contopus, especially a wood pewee.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A small olivaceous flycatcher of the family Tyrannidæ and genus Contopus. C. virens is the common wood-pewee of most parts of the United States and British America. It has a peculiarly drawling two-syllabled note, expressed by its name, quite different from the abrupt note of its relative called the pewit or phœbe. See cut under
Contopus .
Wiktionary
- n. Common American tyrant flycatchers (of the genus Contopus).
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) A common American tyrant flycatcher (Sayornis phœbe, or Sayornis fuscus). Called also
pewit , andphœbe . - n. Local, U.S. The woodcock.
WordNet 3.0
- n. small olive-colored woodland flycatchers of eastern North America
Etymologies
- Imitative of its call. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of”
“Since Sept. 5, the pewee, which is native to Cuba and the Bahamas, has been seen repeatedly for several days.”
“We had a pewee along the creek behind our house for most of this past summer, and its entertaining song is highly recognizable to me now.”
“I have a feeling the pewee annoyed the film crew, who tried to get as much footage without its distracting call as they could.”
“On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds.”
“There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us.”
“Thought I heard a western wood pewee last week, but it was just a starling imitating the pewee song.”
“Have no idea why a starling would imitate a pewee.”
“The wood pewee, like its relative, the phoebe, feeds largely on the family of flies to which the house fly belongs.”
“It was a wood-pewee's nest, and while I let her peep the mother-bird flew toward us with a shrill pathetic cry.”
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pewee’.
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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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More Bird Wirds: North America
Birds endemic to the United States and/or North America.
toucan, peacock, weaver, bullfinch, redpoll, siskin, crossbill, finch, rosy-finch, oriole, cowbird, blackbird and 213 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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Flora and Fauna
poa annua, pooka, vole, bestiary, popple, turgor, starling, sharpy, copse, coreopsis, clove, corvid and 348 more...
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cool words
Tweets
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