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plover

UK/ˈplʌvə/US/ˈplʌvɚ/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: plovers

A plover is a short-billed shore bird that runs then stops. A ringed plover.

The run and stop is how it hunts, since it watches for movement while standing still. A plover will feign a broken wing to lead anything away from the nest.

Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of plover

  1. 1nounploverA short-billed shore bird that runs then stops.C2

    “A plover ran ahead of them the whole length of the beach.”

plover is a bird.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin pluviarius may come from pluvia, rain, though the connection is disputed.

  1. Latin

    pluvia — rain

  2. Medieval Latin

    plovarius

  3. Anglo-Norman

    plover

  4. Middle English

    plover

  5. English, today

    plover

Middle English plover, from Anglo-Norman plover, plovier, from Medieval Latin plovarius, pluviārius, of disputed origin; perhaps from Latin pluvia (“rain”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

plover in the wild

  • The term "plover" applies to all the members of the subfamily, though only about half of them include it in their name.

    Plover

  • The bird family Charadriidae includes the plovers, dotterels, and lapwings.

    Charadriidae

  • The piping plover (Charadrius melodus) is a small, sand-colored shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America.

    Piping plover

  • There are two subspecies of piping plovers: the eastern population is known as Charadrius melodus melodus and the mid-west population is known as C. m. circumcinctus.

    Piping plover

  • The semipalmated plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) is a small plover.

    Semipalmated plover

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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.