Wilson's snipe
12
9.4
A medium bird with a long straight bill and brown and grey feathers that lives in marshes
- noun
- /ˈwɪlsənz naɪp/
- Specialized
:
becasina de Wilson
Synonyms
9.9
A small brown marsh bird in North America with a long thin bill for finding food in mud
is the full species term rather than a narrower subspecies
Surface Forms
Wilson's snipe singular
Morphology
Wilson's + snipe
The construction is a straightforward possessive + noun: 'Wilson's' (a surname in possessive form) + 'snipe' (a type of wading bird), so a learner who knows 'snipe' and possessive forms can infer it denotes a particular kind or species of snipe. Eponymous animal names (e.g. "Wilson's warbler") are a common, cross-linguistic pattern, making the meaning derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
Wilson's snipe is named for the bird expert Wilson, and the word snipe is an old name for a small marsh bird with a long straight bill that searches mud for food. So the name points to this particular long-billed marsh bird.