Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Pelican
/ˈpɛlɪkən/noun
A large water bird with a long bill and a stretchy throat pouch for scooping up fish.
The Greek roots
πελεκάν
pelekán
pelican, woodpecker
Literally: “axe-bird”
Follow a root:πελεκάν1 word
The story of the word
The Greek name sits beside πέλεκυς, an axe, and πελεκάω, to hew, and ancient writers used it of the woodpecker too, so the axe may name the bill's work rather than its shape. Medieval bestiaries claimed the pelican stabbed its own breast to feed its young on blood, which put the bird onto church vestments and into heraldry as a pelican in her piety. The behaviour behind the story is duller: parent birds press the bill down against the chest to bring up fish.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
In a sentence
A pelican dropped out of the sky and hit the water like a sack of bricks.