Definitions

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

  • noun A little bird; a nestling.

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

  • noun A little bird; birdie; a nestling.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From bird +‎ -ling.

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Examples

  • This done, he broke one of the vials, and when he had sprinkled three drops of the Water of Death on the slain birdling, immediately its torn body grew together again.

    Folk Tales From Many Lands 1910

  • There's simply nothing, nothing in the world, that warms the heart so much or makes us feel needed and worthwhile. â¨â¨But sometimes, just like that helpless hatchling struggling for survival, in order to truly help, we need to step away, let it go, and watch that birdling fly.

    Layla Revis: Mrs. Fix It Layla Revis 2011

  • But sometimes, just like that helpless hatchling struggling for survival, in order to truly help, we need to step away, let it go, and watch that birdling fly.

    Layla Revis: Mrs. Fix It Layla Revis 2011

  • Once you touch the delicate baby birdling, once you try too hard to help it live, you risk having it abandoned by its own mother and dying; helping can actually cause harm.

    Layla Revis: Mrs. Fix It Layla Revis 2011

  • Once you touch the delicate baby birdling, once you try too hard to help it live, you risk having it abandoned by its own mother and dying; helping can actually cause harm.

    Layla Revis: Mrs. Fix It Layla Revis 2011

  •  He had an incomplete conception that when he brought the bird to school on the next day, that they would form some kind of mystical family, where he would occupy the position of father and protector as Rebekka brought her expert nurturance to bear on their little birdling.

    Old Egg Mark Cecil Stevens 2010

  • Thousands of mocking birds filled the air with music, and many a birdling started in its nest upon seeing brown eyes and blue, peering into its leafy hiding place.

    Bond and Free: A Tale of the South 1984

  • The movements are very much like the "fluttering of a young birdling."

    The Mother and Her Child William S. Sadler

  • I can't help feeling mighty sorry for him, if the foster birdling is really going to fly away from his nest after he has reared and loved her so tenderly, but, after all, it is only the history of the human race.

    'Smiles' A Rose of the Cumberlands Eliot H. Robinson

  • After fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life, he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck, driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air; sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps -- oh bliss!

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873 Various

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