house martin
- noun
- /ˈhaʊs ˈmɑːtɪn/
- UK
:
martinete
- The house martin built its nest under the eaves of our home, making it a charming sight in the summer.
Examples
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The swallow may fly south with the sun, or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land.
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When walking through the countryside, I often see house martins swooping low to catch insects in midair.
-
Every spring, the house martins return to our village to raise their young in the nests they build on the rooftops.
Synonyms
A small swallow that nests under the eaves of buildings
A group of small swallows called house martins that nest under roofs
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a straightforward compounding of 'house' (building) + 'martin' (a type of swallow), so the meaning — a martin associated with houses or nesting on buildings — is directly inferable from the parts. The modifier + noun pattern is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily understand the term.
Etymology
House martin comes from the simple picture of small birds like swallows that make mud nests under people's roofs. The word house shows where they live and martin is the name for this kind of swallow, so the name means the bird that 'nests' on houses.
