Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun ornithology The Yellow-hammer; yellow bunting; Emberiza citrinella.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the second element of yellow-ammer, favoured over hammer owing to the spelling of its German cognate and synonym Ammer ("bunting"). The -(h)ammer element may represent the Old English amore (given in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts as a gloss for the unidentified Latin word scorellus) or -hama (“natural integument”; whence the obsolete hame, of the same meaning); the plausibility of and the lack of conclusive evidence for either interpretation renders the prescriptive favouring of yellow-ammer over yellow-hammer unwarranted.

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