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siskin (SIS-kin) - n., any of several small Eurasian and North American finches of the genus Carduelis, especially the Eurasian or common siskin (Carduelis spinus).
All of them very acrobatic yellow-and-brown birds, though the common North American species, the pine siskin, is rather on the drab side with hardly any yellow. The name was borrowed around 1560 from either Middle Dutch sijsken or its Low German dialect source sisschen or zeischen, diminutive form of zīse (Middle High German) or ziseke or sisek (Middle Low German), same meaning, of Slavic origin. (The modern High German form is Zeisig.) All of which vastly oversimplifies a really complex net of borrowings and adaptations as it passed from east to west.
---L.
All of them very acrobatic yellow-and-brown birds, though the common North American species, the pine siskin, is rather on the drab side with hardly any yellow. The name was borrowed around 1560 from either Middle Dutch sijsken or its Low German dialect source sisschen or zeischen, diminutive form of zīse (Middle High German) or ziseke or sisek (Middle Low German), same meaning, of Slavic origin. (The modern High German form is Zeisig.) All of which vastly oversimplifies a really complex net of borrowings and adaptations as it passed from east to west.
---L.
