While vacationing on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, a listener encountered an Australian who used the term skylarking to mean “horsing around.” The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years and once referred to racing through the...
Writer Stu Royal has gathered whole flock of unflattering names for several species of birds, and wryly tweeted a list to prove his point: drab seed-eater, go-away bird, rough-faced shag, sad flycatcher, hoary puffleg, smew, horned screamer, and...
Dole is a collective noun for doves, related to a Latin word for sadness. A news story about a vigil used it for doves released in memory of someone who had died. It belongs with bird-group terms such as a famous murmuration of starlings and other...
bobo n.— «I would that I a sky lark were/To sing sweet songs of love/That I could leave the earth below/And soar far, far above.…But I don’t know now after all/If that would be much fun/Some bobo’d probably crack me up/At long range...