Sheldrake

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large, colorful duck of the genus Tadorna that lives near coasts and wetlands and is related to the true geese
2. A brightly marked waterbird resembling a goose, belonging to the shelduck group and often seen on estuaries
3. Any of several big, chestnut-and-white ducks with a bold green head that nest in burrows along shorelines

Etymology: The sheldrake is named for its colouring rather than its size: the first half of the word comes from Middle English "sheld", meaning "parti-coloured", or patched in black and white. The same root appears in Middle Dutch "shillede", which points to a shared Germanic ancestry between English and the Dutch-speaking lands across the North Sea, where ducks of this kind were familiar to the same fenland and coastal communities. The second half, "drake", is an ordinary English word for the male duck, so the whole compound means something like "patchy-coloured drake". The name thus describes a bird by its plumage in a way that the bright, mottled reds and whites of the male duck would make immediately recognisable to anyone who saw one on the water.

Synonyms: shelduck