from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun Any of various wading birds of the family Ardeidae, having a long neck, long legs, a long pointed bill, and usually white, gray, or bluish-gray plumage.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun A long-legged, long-necked, long-billed, slender-bodied wading bird; any bird of the family Ardeidœ, but especially of the subfamily Ardeinœ.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun (Zoöl.) Any wading bird of the genus Ardea and allied genera, of the family Ardeidæ. The herons have a long, sharp bill, and long legs and toes, with the claw of the middle toe toothed. The common European heron (Ardea cinerea) is remarkable for its directly ascending flight, and was formerly hunted with the larger falcons.
noun (Bot.) a plant of the genus Erodium; -- so called from the fancied resemblance of the fruit to the head and beak of the heron.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A long-legged, long-necked wading bird of the family Ardeidae.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)
noun grey or white wading bird with long neck and long legs and (usually) long bill
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English, from Old French, of Germanic origin.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English heroun, heiron, from Anglo-Norman heiron, from Old Dutch heigero (compare Middle Dutch heiger), from Proto-Germanic *haigrô (compare Swedish häger), metathesis of *hraigrô (compare Old English hrāgra, Dutch reiger, German Reiher), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kreik-, *(s)kreig- (“to screech, creak”) (compare Welsh crëyr ("heron"), Ancient Greek κρίζω (krízō, "to creak, screech").
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Examples
To McEneaney, the heron was a sign — a communication from Eamon — like those dozens of relatives of Trade Center victims say they've received from loved ones.
If you are interested to hear PM Shaikh Hasina's meeting with the army officers ... here are the 3 links ... which is now blocked againby shameless Prime Minister, saying "contents subversive to the state." what a "chagol" as the Army officers called heron thisrecorded conversation between prime minister and army officers.
The speckled heron, which is nicknamed ‘the skulker’, is said in folklore stories to be of servile origin, and, as its nickname implies, it is the laziest bird of the three species.
The heron was a very special creature inasmuch as it was a solitary bird, quietly stalking its prey, which it speared with its long, curved serrated beak.
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