Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Botany Having a pileus.
  • adjective Having a crest covering the pileum. Used of a bird.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Same as pileate.
  • In ornithology, crested; having the feathers of the pileum elongated and conspicuous: as, the pileated woodpecker.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective botany Having a pileus
  • adjective zoology Having a crest covering the pileum

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin pīleātus, wearing a pileus, from pīleus, felt cap.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • Crested.

    November 14, 2007

  • As in the woodpecker that used to live in the woods behind my house in North Carolina. Wonderous sight indeed.

    November 14, 2007

  • Oh yes. The glorious Pileated Woodpecker (after which, unfortunately, the psycopathic Woody Woodpecker character was modeled). They are wonderful birds. Except Woody.

    November 14, 2007

  • Pronunciation:

    There is a long standing difference (right/wrong?) way to pronounce this bird's name.

    Your pronunciation guide has the word two ways. 1st: the letters suggest the short sound of the "i" as in "hit". 2nd: the audio sound is the way I pronounce it with the long sound of the "i".

    To me it's like tomato or potato. Both are right. Depends on where y'all from.

    That said, I prefer the way I have known the word from childhood, with the long "i". But I never "correct" any of my students for the way they say the word. I'm just glad they use it.

    June 24, 2009

  • "The pileated drummer's wawk—it was unignorable

    that that was my song, the drummer's low wawk wawk wawk, it was unignorable,

    and not the sweet sweet sweet prothonotary's warble."

    "Blues Haiku" by John Shoptaw in The New Yorker, March 28, 2011, p 88

    March 31, 2011