puffin
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A puffin
English
Etymology
From Middle English poffin, poffoun, puffon, equivalent to puff + -ing, or perhaps ultimately from Middle Cornish (compare Breton poc'han (“puffin”)).
Pronunciation
Noun
puffin (plural puffins)
- (now obsolete) The young of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), especially eaten as food.
- The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) or (by extension) any of the other various small seabirds of the genera Fratercula and Lunda that are black and white with a brightly-coloured beak.
- Synonyms: (Britain, regional) pope, sea-parrot
- 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, “The White Seal”, in The Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, →OCLC, page 110:
- Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas—the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude—took up the cry, and—so Limmershin told me—for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet.
- (entomology) Any of various African and Asian pierid butterflies of the genus Appias. Some species of this genus are also known as albatrosses.
- (obsolete) A puffball.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
Fratercula arctica
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French
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
puffin m (plural puffins)
Further reading
- “puffin”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.