Word of the Day:
lapwing
What It Means
Any of several medium-sized wading birds belonging to the subfamily Vanellinae, within family Charadriidae.
The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus).
Lapwing in Context
“The resident tropical plovers have much less pointed wings, and most of the lapwings have fairly rounded wing-tips, a wing shape apparently more adapted to aerial manoeuvrability than to long-distance migration.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English lapwynge, lapwynke, lappewincke, lapwynche, lhapwynche, from Old English hlēapewince (“lapwing”), from Old English hlēapan (“to leap”) + wincian (“to wink, make a sign”), due to its manner of flight. Cognate with West Frisian ljip (“lapwing”). The modern form is influenced by folk etymology to resemble English wing.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lapwing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “lapwing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lapwing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
