![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Theme week! -- just as there are many New Zealand birds that are fun to say, there's also many shorebirds with fun names. Starting with:
dotterel (DOT-er-uhl) - n., a small Eurasian plover (Charadrius morinellus) with white bands around the head and neck, noted for its relative tameness; (Brit. dialect) a foolish, easily duped person.
Their relative fearlessness makes them easy to hunt and trap, thus both the name (from dote, which in Middle English meant to behave foolishly, become feeble-minded) and the metaphoric extension. Pretty bird, though.
---L.
dotterel (DOT-er-uhl) - n., a small Eurasian plover (Charadrius morinellus) with white bands around the head and neck, noted for its relative tameness; (Brit. dialect) a foolish, easily duped person.
Their relative fearlessness makes them easy to hunt and trap, thus both the name (from dote, which in Middle English meant to behave foolishly, become feeble-minded) and the metaphoric extension. Pretty bird, though.
---L.
