teal
UK /tiːl/ · US /til/ noun, adjective, proper noun
Forms teals teale Teall Teel Teele
- noun (countable) Any of various small freshwater ducks of the genus Anas that are brightly coloured and have short necks.
- noun (countable, uncountable) A dark, somewhat bluish-green colour; a dark cyan.
- noun (countable, Australia, politics, chiefly attributive) A teal independent.
- adjective Having a bluish-green colour.
- proper noun A surname transferred from the nickname.
- proper noun A ghost town in Cole County, Missouri, United States.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English tele, probably from an unrecorded Old English *tǣle, cognate with West Frisian tjilling (“teal”), Middle Dutch teling (“teal”) (modern Dutch taling), Middle Low German telink, from Proto-Germanic *tailijaz, of unknown ultimate origin, with no cognates outside of Germanic. Compare feal and heal for similar phonological development.
As the name of a shade of dark greenish-blue like the color patterns on the fowl's head and wings, it is attested from 1923.
The Australian political sense derives from the colour teal being intermediate between green (signifying environmentalism) and blue (signifying the conservative Australian Liberal Party).
From teal, a nickname given to someone considered to resemble this duck.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any one of several species of small fresh-water ducks of the genus Anas and the subgenera Querquedula and Nettion. The male is handsomely colored, and has a bright green or blue speculum on the wings.
Etymology [OE. tele; akin to D. teling a generation, production, teal, telen to breed, produce, and E. till to cultivate. The English word probably once meant, a brood or flock. See Till to cultivate.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “teal”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details