Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having a forked tail; scissor-tailed; swallow-tailed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Zoöl.) Having the outer tail feathers longer than the median ones; swallow-tailed; -- said of many birds.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a tropical American flycatcher (Milvulus tyrannus).
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a gull of the genus Xema, of two species, esp. X. Sabinii of the Arctic Ocean.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a graceful American kite (Elanoides forficatus); -- called also swallow-tailed kite.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • The Strength of One Armis based on a dugong - (a fork-tailed manatee) that sailors, she tells me, used to mistake as mermaids.

    Spread ArtCulture: Patricia Piccinini's World of Creatures Great & Small Spread ArtCulture 2010

  • The Strength of One Armis based on a dugong - (a fork-tailed manatee) that sailors, she tells me, used to mistake as mermaids.

    Spread ArtCulture: Patricia Piccinini's World of Creatures Great & Small Spread ArtCulture 2010

  • High over them all, arched, black, angular, fork-tailed, and crooked winged like a terror of prehistory circled the magnificent frigate birds.

    Kook Peter Heller 2010

  • The Strength of One Armis based on a dugong - a fork-tailed manatee that sailors, she tells me, used to mistake as mermaids.

    Spread ArtCulture: Patricia Piccinini's World of Creatures Great & Small Spread ArtCulture 2010

  • As I wrote in my 2004 book list back when I read it: "PI does not have white sand and those traffic jams at the gatehouse during the fork-tailed flycatcher's visit that year were definitely people who came to see the bird."

    Archive 2009-07-01 2009

  • That's why I laughed my ... off when I read in Mark Obmascik's The Big Year that when one of the competitors comes to tick off the fork-tailed flycacther at Parker River NWR the cars lined up at the gatehouse are there for the "white sand beaches" and not for the fork-tailed flycatcher.

    undiscovered 2009

  • I have only an index-less proof copy but, without too much trouble, I've found accounts of Leonardo da Vinci's obsession with fork-tailed birds, swallows as well as kites.

    Peter Stothard - Times Online - WBLG: 2009

  • And when there's a rarity like a black-tailed godwit or a fork-tailed flycatcher, the traffic jams on the refuge's one road are legendary.

    undiscovered 2009

  • And when there's a rarity like a black-tailed godwit or a fork-tailed flycatcher, the traffic jams on the refuge's one road are legendary.

    Archive 2009-07-01 2009

  • That's why I laughed my ... off when I read in Mark Obmascik's The Big Year that when one of the competitors comes to tick off the fork-tailed flycacther at Parker River NWR the cars lined up at the gatehouse are there for the "white sand beaches" and not for the fork-tailed flycatcher.

    Archive 2009-07-01 2009

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