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Glite Dictionary
🥄 A ladle 🦆 A diving duck 🐦 A stream bird
dipper

dipper

9.0
A small North American duck with a bushy head that dives underwater
  • noun
  • /ˈdɪpər/
  • US
translation icon : pato buceador
  • The wildlife photographer captured an amazing shot of a dipper with its distinctive bushy head feathers.

Examples

  • At sunrise, the dipper gracefully plunged into the water, searching for its breakfast.

  • People whose BP drops overnight are known as 'dippers'.

    Academic text (2012)

  • It dropped, bringing with it two more dippers and a metal lantern.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • While hiking near the lake, we spotted a male dipper diving for fish in the clear water.

Synonyms

butterball
vsdipper
  • US
3 9.7

A small North American diving duck with a round head and bushy feathers

is the main species name used in general reference
bufflehead
vsdipper
  • US
1 9.9

A small diving duck with a large white patch on the head

is more general and does not mention head color
Bucephela albeola
vsdipper
  • Specialized
9.9

A small North American diving duck whose male has a round head with a white patch

is the ordinary common name used in everyday language

Compounds

Big Dipper
11 3.2

A pattern of seven bright stars that looks like a large ladle in the northern sky

Little Dipper
2 5.6

A group of seven stars that look like a small spoon in the northern sky with Polaris at its handle

double dipper
  • Literature
1 7.5

A person who receives a government salary and a pension at the same time

big dipper
  • Archaic
5.6

A roller coaster at an amusement park with steep drops and sharp turns

skinny-dipper
  • NSFW
8.9

A person who swims naked in a lake or sea

Surface Forms

dipper singular
dippers plural

Morphology

dipper = dip (semi-transparent) = dip + er

The word is built transparently from 'dip' + '-er', but the bird-name sense is specialized and only loosely predictable from the action of dipping or diving.

Etymology

Dipper for the small diving duck comes from the word dip meaning 'to put into water' plus the ending -er meaning 'one who does'. The duck was named for diving and 'dipping' under the water to feed, which explains its name.