Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The green woodpecker, Gecinus viridis: from its loud laughing notes. Also yaffil, yaffler, yaffingale. See cut under popinjay.
- n. An armful.
- n. A pile of codfish to be carried from the flakes to the storehouse.
Wiktionary
- n. UK the European green woodpecker, Picus viridis
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) The European green woodpecker (Picus viridis syn. Genius viridis). It is noted for its loud laughlike note. Called also
eccle ,hewhole ,highhoe ,laughing bird ,popinjay ,rain bird ,yaffil ,yaffler ,yaffingale ,yappingale ,yackel , andwoodhack .
Examples
“If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming.”
“I might start using it in my ESL classes so that a new generation of Koreans will know the proper English terminology for an 'armful of something' is a 'yaffle'.”
“Behind the hill, behind the trees, the green woodpecker – the yaffle – shouts his mocking, laugh-like call which in country weather lore is a sure sign of rain.”
“Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;”
“From above the hedges the sleepy cows looked down; a yaffle laughed a field or two away; in the sycamores, which had come out before their time, the bees hummed.”
“a rattle, what a yaffle — as they call the woodpecker, the laughing bird that flits from tree to tree.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘yaffle’.
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 more...
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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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Open List: Greens
A lits of greens: cooked leafy vegetables; pigments, paint names, compound words, etc; words and phrases that pertain to or contain "green". Please add your favorites!
See this list f...greenery, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, green shoots, viridian green, malachite green, sap green, green grocer, radish greens, beet greens, spring green and 282 more...
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T'ain't going to drain no more
wordie stoppers: without refrain: stanza on its own: lotion motion: T'ain't going to drain no moor
nanopyle, nanonize, nanocosm, ombromombo, misle(ad), nanostrobos, nanomini, peerl, serein, hyetalous, pelter, sluiciest and 43 more...
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Bird Wirds: Sundry Nicknames
A list of birders' "shorthand" names, traditional nicknames, non-English names, and obsolete names for feathered creatures worldwide.
Interesting blog entry here on naming U.S. birds.welsh ambassador, goatsucker, french magpie, timberdoodle, butterbutt, popinjay, logcock, old cranky, long john, sprog, butterbum, wedgie and 697 more...
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Outlander series words
A place for me to keep words I found (or found anew) while reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. (Culling my enormous "Learned (or Encountered) in Reading" list.)
gralloch, yeuk, corpse-candle, saprophytic, baldachin, Kermanshah, celandine, tynchal, quaich, mesentery, basidium, dittany and 244 more...
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Reading Reading
Words from the works of Peter Reading - at least one from each (except the Schwitters-esque erosions, cut-ups etc).
overbright, pimpled, muskiness, effuse, stoup, maul, unlevel, viscid, perfidious, glibly, aloes, drouth and 449 more...
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Like True Newfoundlanders
A place for me to store my Newfoundland English, as I learn it. (Might take a while.)
screech-in, screech, moose milk, bucklish, buckly, buckaloon, buccaloon, newfoundland sock, rum runner, scravel, newfoundland, oonchook and 112 more...
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A Serving of Random Palavery
This is an eclectic and somewhat random list of words that catch and hold my attention. They may be archaic or disused, dialectal, jargon words from my fields of academic speciality (linguistics, ...
scraffle, infelicitous, misprize, defrock, caitiff, gimcrack, innerve, abjure, cyberchondriac, indurate, hexagynous, pistils and 146 more...
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The Other Side of Silence
A sound garden.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. --Walt Whitmantin cry, chark, gride, scroop, crepitation, stridulation, swazzle, death-ruckle, cronk, rumble, borborygmus, crowling and 165 more...
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TankHughes's Words
ambulance, ampersand, assassin, assuage, atom, awkward, botany, boustrophedonic, brinksmanship, bumbershoot, bundesliga, calamity and 64 more...
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birdie
bird names that are fun to say
coot, grackle, hoatzin, jay, barnacle goose, skua, rook, grosbeak, junco, chickadee, waxwing, nuthatch and 49 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for yaffle.

chained_bear "The sharp cry of a woodpecker—the kind Jamie called a yaffle—echoed deep in the woods and then fell silent."
—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 165 Jan 18, 2010
fbharjo rainbird Dec 2, 2008
yarb The Formative Minds
are at it again -
exchanging sterile
platitudes, students
sip Pils, wear daft clothes.
One of them yaffles
in gormless Scotch tones
treating of ball games
and cheeky rude pranks -
he's a fun person.
- Peter Reading, 5x5x5x5x5, 1983 Jul 4, 2008
chained_bear Also a Newfoundland word describing a pile of seal pelts stacked to be dragged back to the ship. Dec 10, 2007
reesetee I think it aptly describes that goofy little crest some woodpeckers have. ;-) Sep 14, 2007
trivet lovely! Sep 14, 2007
reesetee The Green Woodpecker, Picus viridis, from Europe and western Asia. See also: popinjay.
Sep 14, 2007