great gray owl
- noun
- /ɡreɪt ɡreɪ oʊl/
- US
:
búho grande gris
- A great gray owl was seen hunting in the twilight, its large wings silently gliding over the forest floor.
Examples
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When she sang about the great gray owl and how it got its mustache, they laughed.
Fiction book (2001) -
The great gray owl's a strange creature.
Fiction book (1991) -
I got word of a great gray owl in the George Washington National Forest, and since that's in your neck of the woods...
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Great gray owl.
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Great gray owl.
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Usually I chose that last option—the one about the single big drink—and sometimes, while I was out on the porch, this great gray owl would come flying in from out of the woods.
Fiction book (1991) -
While hiking in the woods, we spotted a beautiful great gray owl perched on a branch, its round face clearly visible.
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The great gray owl is known for its distinctive grey feathers and impressive size, making it a fascinating bird to observe.
Synonyms
A very large grey owl with a round dish-shaped face that lives in northern forests
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a very large owl with grey plumage' is directly and transparently composed from 'great' (very large) + 'gray' (colour) + 'owl' (bird), following the usual adjective-adjective-noun descriptive pattern in English. This is a literal, descriptive phrase (not idiomatic) and the same compositional logic appears across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the words would understand it.
Etymology
Great gray owl: The name great gray owl comes from a simple picture: great means very large, gray shows its color, and owl is the bird, so you can picture a huge, round-faced gray bird sitting quietly in snowy woods. That's why the name means 'a very large grey owl'.
