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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of various small, olive-gray North American flycatchers of the genus Contopus, especially a wood pewee.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. 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

  1. n. Common American tyrant flycatchers (of the genus Contopus).

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Zoöl.) A common American tyrant flycatcher (Sayornis phœbe, or Sayornis fuscus). Called also pewit, and phœbe.
  2. n. Local, U.S. The woodcock.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. small olive-colored woodland flycatchers of eastern North America

Etymologies

  1. 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”

    Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers

  • “Since Sept. 5, the pewee, which is native to Cuba and the Bahamas, has been seen repeatedly for several days.”

    marconews.com Stories

  • “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.”

    Archive 2007-11-01

  • “I have a feeling the pewee annoyed the film crew, who tried to get as much footage without its distracting call as they could.”

    Archive 2007-11-01

  • “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.”

    Walden

  • “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.”

    Walden

  • “Thought I heard a western wood pewee last week, but it was just a starling imitating the pewee song.”

    grouse Diary Entry

  • “Have no idea why a starling would imitate a pewee.”

    grouse Diary Entry

  • “The wood pewee, like its relative, the phoebe, feeds largely on the family of flies to which the house fly belongs.”

    Bird Day; How to prepare for it

  • “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.

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‘pewee’ has been looked up 1571 times, added to 5 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 10.