goshawk

UK/ˈɡɒshɔːk/

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Other forms: goshawks

A goshawk is a large short-winged hawk used in falconry. Fly a goshawk, a female goshawk, the goshawk stooped.

It hunts through woodland rather than in the open, which is what the short wings and long tail are for. The name is goose hawk, and falconers have called it a difficult and temperamental bird for centuries.

Definitions of goshawk

1noungoshawkA large short-winged hawk used in falconry.C2
“The falconer released his goshawk, and it shot through the trees after a pigeon.”

goshawk is a bird.

Where it comes from

Old English goshafoc is goose plus hawk.

Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Old English
gōshafoc — goose hawk
Middle English
goshauk
English, today
goshawk

Built from

gōs · Old English — goose
hafoc · Old English — hawk

Middle English goshauk, from Old English gōshafoc (“goose hawk”), from gōs (“goose”) and hafoc (“hawk”). Compare also Old Norse gáshaukr and Late Middle English gosling. The bird gets its name from the fact that the birds of the species are hawks that were alleged to prey on geese.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

goshawk in the wild

The red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus) is a bird of prey found in Australia.
Red goshawk
The crested goshawk (Lophospiza trivirgata) is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae that is widely distributed in tropical Asia.
Crested goshawk
In line with Rolls-Royce convention of naming piston engines after birds of prey, it was named after the goshawk.
Rolls-Royce Goshawk
The brown goshawk (Tachyspiza fasciata) is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae found in Australia and surrounding islands.
Brown goshawk
The grey goshawk (Tachyspiza novaehollandiae) is a strongly built, medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae that is found in eastern and northern Australia.
Grey goshawk

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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.

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