Other forms: falcons
A falcon is a fast hunting bird that kills in a steep dive. A peregrine falcon, train a falcon, the falcon stooped.
The peregrine falcon in its dive is the fastest animal on earth, recorded above three hundred kilometres an hour. Falconry is thousands of years old and the vocabulary of it is enormous. Falcons kill with a notched beak where hawks kill with their feet.
1nounfalconA fast hunting bird that kills in a dive.
“The falcon dived from the sky and caught a pigeon in mid-air.”
falcon is a bird.
Latin falco names the bird, probably from falx, a sickle, for the curve of the claws or wings.
Proto-Indo-European
*pol̑- — pale
Proto-Germanic
*falkô — falcon
Frankish
*falkō — falcon, hawk
Latin
falcō — falcon
Old French
falcun
Middle English
faucoun
English, today
falcon
Built from
Middle English faucoun, falcon, faulcon, from Old French falcun, from Latin falcō (“falcon”), of gem origin, probably via Frankish falkō (“falcon, hawk”), from Proto-Germanic falkô (“falcon”), from Proto-Indo-European pol̑- (“pale”), from pel- (“fallow”). 2 Cognate with Old English fealca, fealcen (“falcon”), Dutch valk (“falcon, hawk”), German Falke (“falcon, hawk”), Norwegian - and Swedish falk (“falcon”), Icelandic fálki (“falcon”), French faucon (“falcon”), Italian falco (“falcon”), Spanish halcón (“falcon”), Portuguese falcão (“falcon”), Latin falco (“falcon”), Lithuanian pálšas (“pale”), Latvian bāls (“pale”), ltg buolgs (“pale”). More at fallow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA