puffin

English

Etymology

A puffin

From Middle English poffin, poffoun, puffon, equivalent to puff +‎ -ing, or perhaps ultimately from Middle Cornish (compare Breton poc'han (“puffin”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʌfɪn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌfɪn

Noun

puffin (plural puffins)

1. (now obsolete) The young of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), especially eaten as food. [14th–19th c.]
2. The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) or (by extension) any of the other various small seabirds of the genera Fratercula and Lunda that are black and white with a brightly-coloured beak. [from 17th c.]

   Synonyms: (Britain, regional) pope, sea-parrot

   • 1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 527:

     The place was just, in short, the only spot on that part of the coast where anybody could well live; there was a neat little creek, where a boat might lie as snug as a puffin in her nest, and out from this creek a ledge of sunken rocks ran into the sea.

   • 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, “The White Seal”, in The Jungle Book, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, →OCLC, page 110:

     Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas—the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude—took up the cry, and—so Limmershin told me—for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet.

3. (entomology) Any of various African and Asian pierid butterflies of the genus Appias. Some species of this genus are also known as albatrosses.
4. (obsolete) A puffball.

Derived terms

• Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica)
• common puffin (Fratercula arctica)
• crested puffin (Fratercula cirrhata)
• horned puffin (Fratercula corniculata)
• puffin crossing
• puffinet
• puffinry
• puffling
• tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata)

Related terms

• fraterculine

Descendants

• → French: puffin
  • → Italian: puffino

Translations

Fratercula arctica

• Belarusian: ту́пік m (túpik)
• Bulgarian: тупик m (tupik), кайра f (kajra)
• Catalan: fraret (ca) m
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 海鸚 / 海鹦 (hoi² jing¹)

  Mandarin: 海鸚 / 海鹦 (zh) (hǎiyīng)

• Cornish: nath m, popa m
• Czech: papuchalk m
• Danish: lunde (da) c, søpapegøje c
• Dutch: papegaaiduiker (nl) m
• Esperanto: fraterkulo
• Faroese: lundi (fo) m
• Finnish: lunni (fi)
• French: macareux (fr) m
• Galician: arao (gl) m
• German: Lund (de) m, Lundevogel m (genera Fratercula), Papageitaucher (de) m, Papageientaucher (de) m (F. arctica), Hundlund m (F. corniculata), Gelbschopflund m (F. cirrhata), Nashornalk m (Cerorhinca monocerata)
• Greek: φρατέρκουλα f (fratérkoula)
• Greenlandic: qilanngaq
• Hungarian: lunda (hu)
• Icelandic: lundi (is) m
• Indonesian: beo laut (literally “sea myna”), pufin
• Irish: puifín m, fuipín m
• Italian: pulcinella di mare (it) m
• Japanese: 角目鳥 (ja) (ツノメドリ, tsunomedori)
• Manx: pibbin f
• Navajo: tsídii naʼałkǫ́ʼígíí
• Norman: gode à rouoge bé f (Jersey), poffîn m (Jersey)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: lunde

• Old Norse: lundi m
• Polish: maskonur (pl) m
• Portuguese: papagaio-do-mar (pt) m
• Romanian: furtunar (ro) m
• Romansh: sfunsella f
• Russian: ту́пик (ru) m (túpik), топо́рик (ru) m (topórik)
• Scots: (tammie) norrie, ailsa cock
• Scottish Gaelic: buthaid f, peata-ruadh m
• Serbo-Croatian: tupik (sh) m
• Slovak: alka bielobradá f, mníšik m
• Slovene: njórka f
• Spanish: frailecillo (es) m
• Swedish: lunnefågel (sv) c
• Turkish: fratercula, deniz papağanı
• Ukrainian: іпатка (ipatka)
• Welsh: pâl m

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English puffin.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /py.fɛ̃/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

Noun

puffin m (plural puffins)

1. shearwater

Descendants

• → Italian: puffino

Further reading

• “puffin”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012