Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various widely distributed shorebirds of the family Charadriidae, having rounded bodies, short tails, and short bills.
  • noun Any of various similar or related birds.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A bird of the family Charadriidæ and genus Charadrius, C. pluvialis.
  • noun Hence Some or any bird of the family Charadriidæ; a charadriomorphic grallatorial bird.
  • noun In various parts of the United States, the Bartramian sandpiper, Bartramia longicauda, more fully called upland, highland, pasture, field, corn-field, prairie, grass, and plain plover. See cut under Bartramia.
  • noun The greater or lesser yellowshanks, Totanus melanoleucus or T. flavipes, commonly called yellow-legged plovers. [Local, U. S.] A loose woman: otherwise called a quail.
  • noun The black-heart plover. [Local, U. S.]
  • noun The golden plover when young. [Ireland.]
  • noun Sqvatarola helvetica
  • noun The Norfolk plover. [Various localities.]

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of limicoline birds belonging to the family Charadridæ, and especially those belonging to the subfamily Charadrinsæ. They are prized as game birds.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any grallatorial bird allied to, or resembling, the true plovers, as the crab plover (Dromas ardeola); the American upland, plover (Bartramia longicauda); and other species of sandpipers.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the lapwing.
  • noun See Tattler.
  • noun [Prov. Eng.] the dunlin.
  • noun [Prov. Eng.] the black-bellied plover.
  • noun The black-bellied plover.

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

  • noun Any of various wading birds of the family Charadriidae.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of numerous chiefly shorebirds of relatively compact build having straight bills and large pointed wings; closely related to the sandpipers

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, from Vulgar Latin *pluviārius, from Latin pluvia, rain; see pluvial.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman plover, pluvier, Old French plovier, from Late Latin plovarius, of disputed origin; perhaps from Latin pluvia ("rain").

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