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gannet

UK/ˈɡænɪt/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,051 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: gannets

A gannet is a big white sea bird that dives like an arrow. A colony of gannets, the gannet plunged, gannets over the shoal.

It folds its wings and hits the water at a hundred kilometres an hour, and it has air sacs in the face and no external nostrils to survive the impact. In British slang a gannet is somebody who eats greedily and constantly.

Unknown · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of gannet

  1. 1noungannetA big white sea bird that dives like an arrow.C1

    “A gannet folded its wings and plunged into the sea after a fish.”

gannet is a bird.

Where it comes from

Old English ganot names the bird, from a Germanic root that also gave gander.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *ganatuz

  2. Proto-West Germanic

    *ganat

  3. Old English

    ganot

  4. Middle English

    ganet

  5. English, today

    gannet

Built from

  • *ganutô · Proto-Germanic — gander

From Middle English ganet, gante, from Old English ganot, from Proto-West Germanic ganat, ganatō, from Proto-Germanic ganatuz, ganutô (“gander”), ultimately related to Proto-Germanic ganzô. 2 Cognate with Dutch gent, Middle Low German gante, German Ganter, Ganser, all “gander, male goose”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

gannet in the wild

  • Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to two metres.

    Gannet

  • Boobies are closely related to the gannets (Morus), which were formerly included in Sula.

    Booby

  • The bird family Sulidae comprises the gannets and boobies.

    Sulidae

  • The northern gannet (Morus bassanus) is a seabird, the largest species of the gannet family, Sulidae.

    Northern gannet

  • The adult northern gannet has a mainly white streamlined body with a long neck, and long and slender wings.

    Northern gannet

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.