Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A ralline bird of the genus Ocydromus, of which there are several species, of New Zealand, New Caledonia, and other Pacific islands, as O. australis, the weak rail. See
Ocydromus .
Etymologies
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Examples
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The night was warm and quiet, the silence only interrupted by the occasional sharp cry of a wood-hen, and the rushing of the river, whilst the ruddy glow of the fire, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles and blankets, formed a picture to me entirely new and rather impressive.
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The silence and freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles packs and blankets, made a picture worthy of a Salvator Rosa or a Nicolas
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The silence and freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles, packs, and blankets, made a picture worthy of a Salvator Rosa or a Nicolas Poussin.
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The château, illuminated from top to bottom, echoed with songs, cries, laughter, uproar, and the venerable Dom Balaguère planted his fork in the wing of a wood-hen, drowning the remorse of his sin under floods of wine of the Pope and the sweet juices of the meats.
In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I Christmas Tales from 'Round the World
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It was as though all had been made ready for him -- the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ran past -- a waiting, virgin world.
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They tell us that when the fairy bride of Corwrion quitted her unlucky husband, she at once flew through the air and plunged into the lake; and one account significantly describes her as flying away _like a wood-hen_.
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The silence and freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles packs and blankets, made a picture worthy of a Salvator Rosa or a Nicolas Poussin.
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Zealand birds, including its heavy flying quails and its wingless wood-hen, to those remote islands of the Pacific in which the skeletons of _Palapteryx ingens_ and _Dinornus giganteus_ lie entombed.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
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_rebchik_, or wood-hen, is found throughout Siberia, and is much cheaper in the market than any kind of domestic fowl.
Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life
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One day, as I was traversing the woods to view my bird-traps, looking into the underwood among the great trees on my right hand, I saw a wood-hen (a bird I used to call so, from its resemblance in make to our
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