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Tern   Listen
Tern

noun
1.
Small slender gull having narrow wings and a forked tail.



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"Tern" Quotes from Famous Books



... said it was Billy's tern, and Billy he sed twasent no sech thing, and I said he lide, and he hit me on the snoot of my nose, and we fot a fite, but victery percht upon the banners of my father, cos he had a stick. Then wile me and Billy was crying Uncle Ned he spoke up and begun: "One time there was a grate North ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... as the speckled stones around that you have to look hard to find them, and at a little distance they seem to vanish altogether. The funny little wee birds, too, are just like rough sand, and have two black lines down their backs; crouching down without moving, they would be well hidden. The common tern lays its eggs amongst rough stones, where you would think that anything so fragile as an egg would easily get broken. Near his case there is a beautiful pure white gull, who lives in the Arctic regions among the ice and snow. It is a wonderful law of Nature that ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... their heads. The note of a thrush was heard away inland. A guillemot skimmed over the water in the same direction as their own, and a tern on curved wing screamed in their wake. There was a sense of expectation over all. The scent of the young fir-trees and the heather was wafted out to them; farther in lay the flowery meadows of Hellebergene. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... to the tolling of the bells for Oscar the king. He raised the stones and looked for tadpoles and sticklebacks, but could find none; not a fish was visible in the water, and consequently there was not a sign of a sea-gull or a tern. Then he felt that a curse rested on the mountain, a curse so strong that it kept even the fishes and the birds away. He fell to considering the life he was leading. He had lost his name, both Christian and surname, and was no more now than No. 65, a name written ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... giving. But it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good grace. The dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts—"troop of shamefaced ones," "you draw in your head like a tern," "you make your voice small like a whistle-pipe," "you beg like one delirious"; and the verb pongitai, "to look cross," is equipped with the pregnant rider, "as at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... place is very silent, except for the clink of hammers where they are breaking down our wooden walls, and, seaward, the cry and splash of gull and tern dipping for their prey in the shoal of herring-fry which is wandering about the bay. Close inshore a porpoise is wallowing, like the jolly sea-pig that he is, in his berth of glistening water. The wild creatures seem to have grown tamer since there are no strollers to keep them aloof. ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine



Words linked to "Tern" :   sea swallow, larid, Sterna hirundo



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