Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Another spelling of gare-fowl.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) See garefowl.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of garefowl.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And then we shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled with them, as the old English and French rovers used to do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells: but we shall remember what Mr. Tennyson says: how

    The Water Babies 2007

  • And then we shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled with them, as the old English and French rovers used to do, of whom dear old

    The Water-Babies A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby Charles Kingsley 1847

  • And then we shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old

    The Water-Babies Charles Kingsley 1847

Comments

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  • Also garefowl

    Another name for the now extinct Great Auk

    January 30, 2008

  • An important character in Charles Kingsley's novel, Water Babies, 1937, is the Last of the Gairfowl, an ancient female Great Auk who advises Tom on his journey.

    January 30, 2008