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prettygoodwordsnipe (SNAIP) - n., any of several shorebirds (genera Gallinago, Lymnocryptes, and Coenocorypha) with long, nearly straight beaks.
Members of the sandpiper family, natch. There are many other definitions of the word, all of them descended from the bird. They are game birds, but their camouflage and erratic flight makes them difficult to shoot. To snipe as a verb, first meaning just to hunt snipe, first appears in the 1770s (in, of all places, British India), followed in the 1820s by the extended sense of to sharpshoot from a concealed place (thus the modern sniper). To attack with snide criticism, especially from a safe distance, is a further extended sense. Going the other direction, as a name for a bird it's attested (as snype) since around 1300, from some Norse-Germanic source, compare snipa in Old Norse (interestingly, not directly from Old English, where it was called snite, which is of uncertain derivation).
And that wraps up the week of more shorebirds, leaving only calidrid, stint, and stilt left over, none of which quite works as a pretty good word. Back next week with the usual morning mix.
---L.
Members of the sandpiper family, natch. There are many other definitions of the word, all of them descended from the bird. They are game birds, but their camouflage and erratic flight makes them difficult to shoot. To snipe as a verb, first meaning just to hunt snipe, first appears in the 1770s (in, of all places, British India), followed in the 1820s by the extended sense of to sharpshoot from a concealed place (thus the modern sniper). To attack with snide criticism, especially from a safe distance, is a further extended sense. Going the other direction, as a name for a bird it's attested (as snype) since around 1300, from some Norse-Germanic source, compare snipa in Old Norse (interestingly, not directly from Old English, where it was called snite, which is of uncertain derivation).
And that wraps up the week of more shorebirds, leaving only calidrid, stint, and stilt left over, none of which quite works as a pretty good word. Back next week with the usual morning mix.
---L.
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Date: 2016-02-05 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 02:40 pm (UTC)---L.