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The Hound of the Baskervilles vocabulary
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bittern
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synonyms: stake-driver, meadow hen, Botaurinae ???
tags: [avian]
► definition
Definition:Defn: A wading bird of the genus Botaurus, allied to the herons, of various species.Note: The common European bittern is Botaurus stellaris. It makes, during the brooding season, a noise called by Dryden bumping, and by Goldsmith booming. The American bittern is B. lentiginosus, and is also called stake-driver and meadow hen. See Stake-driver.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
photo 1: By Jerry Segraves, Public Domain,photo 2: By U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Pacific Region's - American Bittern, public domain,sound file: by Justin Watts, XC451067 (sample only)Accessible at https://www.xeno-canto.org/451067
► uses
Uses:
"It's a very rare bird—practically extinct—in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns."
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
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a huge open-air salon through which no less than two hundred bitterns who hold the time with a deafening cackling strolled at will.
Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, p.423 (1970)
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Ah well I perceive that love is not unlike the fig tree, whose fruit is sweet, whose root is more bitter than the claw of a bitternJohn Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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