wariangle
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English wariangel, weryangle, possibly from Old English *weargincel with the second element reanalyzed as *weargengel. Compare Old English wearg (“outlaw, criminal”), German Würgengel (“destroying angel, destroyer, killer”), -incel (“diminutive suffix”) and English worry.
Pronunciation
Noun
wariangle (plural wariangles)
- (UK, largely obsolete, rare outside dialects) Any of various aggressive shrikes of the genus Lanius, such as the red-backed shrike or great grey shrike, sometimes known as butcherbirds.
- 1768, Adrien Richer, Great events from little causes. Or, A selection of interesting and entertaining stories, drawn from the histories of different nations, etc, page 204:
- This was Charles Albert de Luines, a gentleman of the country of Avignon, who was introduced to a familiarity with Louis XIII. by breaking wariangles to catch sparrows.
- 1792, The Historical magazine; or, Classical library of public events, page 182:
- the young monarch when he was one day amusing himself with his wariangles, that being upwards of fixteen years of age, he was capable of taking the reins of government into his own hands, and that he ought to shake off the yoke which his mother and Concini had imposed on him
- 2011 December 5, Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore (Vol. Book 17) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels), W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, pages 95-117:
- ' what is that bird?' 'It is a shrike, a great grey shrike. Some say wariangle.' ' There is your wariangle again, carrying a mouse, upon my word.' Stephen spoke of shrikes he had known to make his apologies to Sophie: 'he had been contemplating on wariangles, and had overlooked the time.'
- 2013 November 12, Nicola Griffith, Hild: A Novel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 347:
- By one rill, where low tangled hawthorn and gorse grew among the long sea grass, she found a row of tiny wrens and mouse pups spiked on thorns: the work of the wariangle, the butcher-bird. She walked half a mile inland,
Further reading
- “wariangle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- 1883, English Dialect Society, Publications, page 201:
- Wariangles, a sort of noisy, ravenous Birds in Staffordshire and Shropshire, which prey upon other Birds, which, when taken, they hang upon a Thorn or Prickle, and tear them in Pieces and devour them.
- 1894, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Notes to the Canterbury tales, page 326:
- 'Wariangle , or a small Woodpecker'; but a wariangle is really a Shrike; indeed Cotgrave also has: 'Arneat, the ravenous birde called a Shrike, Nynmurder, Wariangle'; which is correct.