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stork

UK/stɔːk/US/stɔɹk/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,656 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: storks

A stork is a tall white bird said to bring babies. A white stork, storks nesting, the stork's nest.

The baby story is northern European and old: storks return in spring, nest on chimneys and were welcomed as a sign of household luck. They have no voice box worth the name and clatter their bills instead. Their nests are reused for decades and grow enormous.

Soloneying · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of stork

  1. 1nounstorkA tall long-legged white bird.B1+

    “A stork stood on one leg in the shallow water, waiting for frogs.”

stork is a bird.

Where it comes from

Old English storc names the bird, from a Germanic root possibly related to a word meaning stiff, from its upright stance.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *sr̥ǵos — stork

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *sturkaz

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *stork

  4. Old English

    storc

  5. Middle English

    stork

  6. English, today

    stork

Middle English stork, from Old English storc, from Proto-West Germanic stork, from Proto-Germanic sturkaz, from Proto-Indo-European sr̥ǵos (“stork”). Near cognates include Dutch stork, German Storch, Swedish stork, and Icelandic storkur. Compare also stārķis, borrowed from Germanic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

stork in the wild

  • There are 20 living species of storks in six genera.

    Stork

  • Various terms are used to refer to groups of storks, two frequently used ones being a muster of storks and a phalanx of storks.

    Stork

  • The shoebill (Balaeniceps rex), also known as the whale-headed stork, whalebill, and shoe-billed stork, is a large long-legged wading bird.

    Shoebill

  • The white stork (Ciconia ciconia) is a large bird in the stork family, Ciconiidae.

    White stork

  • The white stork has been rated as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

    White stork

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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.