owl
/aʊ(ə)l/ noun, verb
Forms owls owling owled
- noun Any of various birds of prey of the order Strigiformes, families Strigidae and Tytonidae, that are primarily nocturnal and have forward-looking, binocular vision, limited eye movement, and good hearing.
- noun (by extension) A person seen as having owl-like characteristics, especially appearing wise or serious, or being nocturnally active.
- noun An owl pigeon.
- noun (politics, uncommon) A politician with moderate views that are neither hawkish nor dovish.
- noun Any of various nymphalid butterflies, especially in the genus Caligo, having large eyespots on the wings.
- verb (archaic, intransitive) To smuggle contraband goods.
- noun (soccer, slang) A player or fan of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English howle, oul, oule, owle, owlle, from Old English ūle, from Proto-West Germanic *uwwulā, from Proto-Germanic *uwwulǭ (“owl”), diminutive of *uwwǭ (“eagle-owl”), of imitative origin or a variant of *ūfaz, *ūfǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *up- (“to cry out”).
Cognate with Scots oul (“owl”), Saterland Frisian Ule (“owl”), West Frisian ûle (“owl”), Cimbrian aul (“owl”), Dutch uil (“owl”), German Eule (“owl”), Low German Uul (“owl”), Luxembourgish Eil (“owl”), Vilamovian aojł (“own”), Yiddish אײַל (ayl, “owl”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ugle (“owl”), Faroese ugla (“owl”), Icelandic uggla, ugla (“owl”), Norwegian Nynorsk ugla, ule (“owl”), Swedish uggla, uv (“owl”); also Bulgarian вопъл (vopăl, “cry, howl, scream”), въпия (văpija, “to weep, yell”), Czech úpět (“to howl, wail”), Russian вопи́ть (vopítʹ, “to howl, scream, yell”), вопия́ть (vopijátʹ, “to appeal; to scream, yell; to lament, wail”), вопль (voplʹ, “cry, scream, wail”), Serbo-Croatian ва̀пити, vàpiti (“to cry out; to scream”), Slovene vpíti (“to scream, yell”).
Named from the Owlerton stadium where they used to play.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any cpecies of raptorial birds of the family Strigidæ. They have large eyes and ears, and a conspicuous circle of feathers around each eye. They are mostly nocturnal in their habits.
- noun A variety of the domestic pigeon. Owl monkey (Zoöl.), any one of several species of South American nocturnal monkeys of the genus Nyctipithecus. They have very large eyes. Called also durukuli.
- verb To pry about; to prowl. [Prov. Eng.]
- verb To carry wool or sheep out of England. [Obs.]
Etymology [AS. ; akin to D. uil, OHG. , G. eule, Icel. ugla, Sw. ugla, Dan. ugle.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “owl”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details