2760: Bird Sparrow Camels Jul 11, 2024

It is a frequent occurrence, especially among natural features, that compound words that cross linguistic boundaries will pick up redundant elements, such as the famous River Avon in Wales (afon is ‘river’ in Welsh). While this is not uncommon among physical features wherein people groups move around them, occasionally it is also seen in other words, such as ‘ostrich’. It comes from the Greek στρουθίων (strouthíōn), itself shortened from στρουθιοκάμηλος (strouthiokámēlos) literally “sparrow-camel” but the O- at the beginning of ‘ostrich’ comes from an addition in Latin. When Latin adopted it as strūthiō, the word ‘avis’ (‘bird’, hence ‘avian’) was added resulting in ‘a(u)strithio’ for a sort of “bird sparrow” translation, though obviously not literally. This is true for the Spanish/Portuguese ‘avestruz’ of the same meaning, where more of Latin’s ‘avis’ is preserved.

2378: Bill vs Beak Jun 22, 2021

Birds have beaks, but some beaks are bills, and while the term 'bill' is now the more restricted term of those two, historically it was the general term with 'beak' only referring to the sharpened bills of birds of prey. In part from that historical confusion, and simply the breadth of variety in which these of rostra are found, there is not much of a practical distinction, and while some are conventional such as ducks having bills and hawks having beaks, other birds may be found described with either nearly synonymously or as a subjective judgment on the shape of the rostrum.