Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The common gull, or mew-gull, Larus canus; any sea-gull. See cut under gull.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The peasant who shows the ruins of the tower, which still crown the beetling cliff and behold the war of the waves, though no mroe tenanted saved by the sea-mew and cormorant, even yet affirms that on this fatal night the Master of Ravenswood, by the bitter exclamations of his despair, evoked some evil fiend, under whose malignant influence the future tissue of incidents was woven.

    The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

  • Pencroft recognized the skua and other gulls among them, the voracious little sea-mew, which in great numbers nestled in the crevices of the granite.

    The Mysterious Island 2005

  • Pencroft recognized the skua and other gulls among them, the voracious little sea-mew, which in great numbers nestled in the crevices of the granite.

    The Mysterious Island 2005

  • Such being the condition of the adjacent land, it could hardly be a matter of surprise that all the sea-birds, the albatross, the gull, the sea-mew, sought continual refuge on the schooner; day and night they perched fearlessly upon the yards, the report of a gun failing to dislodge them, and when food of any sort was thrown upon the deck, they would dart down and fight with eager voracity for the prize.

    Off on a Comet 2003

  • The chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow, — and scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.

    The Odyssey of Homer 2003

  • Wherefore the noisy sweep of its boisterous rush takes gentle rest from my sleeping eye, nor doth the loud-chattering sea-mew suffer me to rest in the night, forcing its wearisome tale into my dainty ears; nor when I would lie down doth it suffer me to be refreshed, clamouring with doleful modulation of its ill-boding voice.

    The Danish History, Books I-IX Grammaticus Saxo

  • Philologically speaking, we should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and inaudible ocean -- all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless -- with only the screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.

    Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright

  • They are perhaps only the cry of the sea-mew, that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck.

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • When they beat the white walls of the screaming sea-mew;

    Mosaics of Grecian History Marcius Willson

  • Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;

    The New Morning Poems Alfred Noyes 1919

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