settings

War and Peace vocabulary

2 birds and/or bird terms

< select a category

ALL

avian

This page requires javascript.

help & settings

[x]

display help icons

show definition by default

show uses by default

nightingale: tags: [avian]

► definition

Definition:

a common migratory, insectivorous European bird species best known for its song.

^{photo: By Carlos Delgado [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 )]}
^{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luscinia_megarhynchos_-_01.jpg}
^{sound file: by Guido Gerding under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported}
^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XN_Luscinia_megarhynchos_012.ogg}

► uses

Uses:

We can listen to the nightingales together. Of course, it's really more in your line; but the wench has no eyes, you see. I should have thought I wasn't worth looking at beside you.'

Ivan Turgenev. The Jew and Other Stories.

---

"My friend," answers the Eagle, "I am a king, but I am not God. It is impossible for me to remedy the cause of your complaint. I can order a Cuckoo to be styled a Nightingale; but to make a Nightingale out of a Cuckoo— that I cannot do."

Ivan Krylov. The Cuckoo and the Eagle (Ralston translation, 1869)

---

The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees.

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World, p.19 (1932)

---

Yes," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his hands and cracked his fingers. "I’ve come to bring you some money, too, for nightingales, we know, can’t live on fairy tales," he said. "You want it, I expect?"

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina

---

Drowsy curlews cried plaintively on the further bank, and in one of the bushes on the nearest side a nightingale was trilling loudly, taking no notice of the crowd of officers. The officers stood round the bush, touched it, but the nightingale went on singing.

Anton Chekhov. The Party and other stories.

---

Ich was in one sumere dale.

In one suþe diȝele hale.

I herde ich holde grete tale.

An hule and one niȝtingale.

The Owl and the Nightingale (circa 1200)