Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various small shorebirds of the family Scolopacidae, usually having a long straight sensitive bill used to pick up insects, worms, and soft mollusks in mud and sand.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small wading bird that runs along the sand and utters a piping note; a sand-lark, sand-plover, or sand-snipe.
  • noun A fish, the pride.
  • noun Of Pennant, the green sandpiper: called Tringa littorea by Linnæus, and Mr. Oldham's white heron by Albin.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of small limicoline game birds belonging to Tringa, Actodromas, Ereunetes, and various allied genera of the family Tringidæ.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A small lamprey eel; the pride.
  • noun See under Curlew.
  • noun See under Stilt.

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

  • noun Any of various small wading birds of the family Scolopacidae.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of numerous usually small wading birds having a slender bill and piping call; closely related to the plovers

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From sand + piper

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Examples

  • While I'm on the topic of recycling, I should mention, too, that the "sandpiper" product line introduced a year or so ago by our St. Catharines Ontario mill was the industry's first 100-per-cent post-consumer, non-de-inked writing paper.

    The Future Is Not What It Was 1994

  • He lost his wife to cancer, is a deep thinker – especially when out looking for a pectoral sandpiper or a black-tailed godwit – badly dressed, anti-consumerist and becomes convinced that, for all the police efforts, society is falling apart and "anarchy rules".

    Pompey meets Le Havre in French TV crime hit 2012

  • (Zool.) (a) Any small sandpiper, as the least sandpiper ({Trigna minutilla}).

    Easter Peeps Bente Lilja Bye 2009

  • (Zool.) (a) Any small sandpiper, as the least sandpiper ({Trigna minutilla}).

    Archive 2009-04-01 Bente Lilja Bye 2009

  • His only companion is a purple sandpiper, speckled and garrulous, who, he thinks, resembles him.

    From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón - review 2011

  • The Seneca Indians believed the woodcock was made from the leftover parts of other birds -- bill of sandpiper, wings of teal, legs of stork, eyes of hawk -- and it fits.

    The Woodcock of Broadway: A Christmas Story (Sort of) 2009

  • Two species of wader, the curlew sandpiper and little stint, do not breed in Britain but pass through on their journey south.

    Weatherwatch: Early autumn bird migration 2011

  • The Seneca Indians believed the woodcock was made from the leftover parts of other birds -- bill of sandpiper, wings of teal, legs of stork, eyes of hawk -- and it fits.

    The Woodcock of Broadway: A Christmas Story (Sort of) 2009

  • Arctic breeding shorebirds such as the dunlin, whimbrel and western sandpiper converge on the rich feeding grounds along the coasts from Louisiana to Florida.

    Spill’s danger to migratory birds 2010

  • The intertidal mudflats and coastal lagoons are important staging sites for migratory shorebirds, including red knot Calidris canutus, white-rumped sandpiper C. fuscicollis and Hudsonian godwit Limosa haemastica.

    Península Valdés, Argentina 2008

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