garefowl

English

Alternative forms

• gairfowl, gare-fowl, gurfel

Etymology

From Icelandic geirfugl, from Old Norse geirfugl (“great auk”), related to Swedish garfågel, Danish geirfugl, Faroese geirfuglur, gorfuglur, French gorfou.

Noun

garefowl (plural garefowls)

1. The great auk.
   • 2020, Tim Ecott, The Land of Maybe, Short Books, published 2021, page 81:

     The Faroese men were able to catch more than a dozen gare-fowl along with 200 guillemots and numerous gannets, collecting them from rocks which the Icelanders were not brave enough to climb.

2. The razorbill

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “garefowl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)