kestrel

UK/ˈkɛstɹəl/US/ˈkɛstɹəl/

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: kestrels

A kestrel is a small falcon that hovers over roadsides. A kestrel over the verge.

It hunts by hanging still in the air with its head perfectly fixed while the wings work. A kestrel can see ultraviolet, which shows it the urine trails of voles in the grass.

Definitions of kestrel

1nounkestrelA small falcon that hovers over roadsides.C1
“A kestrel worked the same stretch of verge every morning.”

kestrel is a bird.

Where it comes from

Middle English castrel comes from Old French cresserelle, probably from a word for a rattle.

Proto-Indo-European
*gerg- — to shout
Proto-West Germanic
*krakōn — to emit a cry, shout
Old Dutch
*krakōn — to crack, creak, emit a cry
Middle Dutch
craken — to creak, crack
Middle French
cresserelle
Middle English
castrel — staniel, bird of prey
English, today
kestrel

Built from

crecerelle · Middle French — bird of prey
crecelle · Middle French — rattle, wooden reel
crepitāre · Latin — to crackle
*krak- · Middle French — to crack, rattle, creak, emit a bird cry

From Middle English castrel (“staniel, bird of prey”), from Middle French cresserelle, crecerelle (“bird of prey”), usually assumed to be from crecelle (“rattle, wooden reel”) (modern crécelle), of obscure origin. Cognates possibly include: Medieval Latin clisterella, French crécerelle and cristel, Neapolitan castariello and crestariello, all sharing the same meaning. Derivation from the assumed Vulgar Latin crepicella, crepitacillum, a diminutive of crepitāculum, from crepitāre (“to crackle”) is difficult to explain from a morphological point of view.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

kestrel in the wild

In the United Kingdom, where no other kestrel species commonly occurs, it is generally just called the "kestrel".
Common kestrel
Some small species of falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some that hover while hunting are called kestrels.
Falcon
The lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) is a small falcon.
Lesser kestrel
The American kestrel (Falco sparverius) is the smallest and most common falcon in the Americas.
American kestrel
The American kestrel usually hunts in an energy-conserving fashion by perching and scanning the ground for prey to ambush, though it also hunts from the air.
American kestrel

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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.

Related words

the craken family

crash

kestrel — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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