piping crow
- noun
- Australian
:
pájaro cantores
- Many bird enthusiasts keep a piping crow for its ability to imitate household sounds.
Examples
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I saw a beautiful piping crow perched on the garden fence, repeating the noise of a whistle.
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The piping crow mimicked the sound of a doorbell.
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The piping crow is admired for its impressive mimicry of other birds' calls.
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Have you ever seen a piping crow in the wild?
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I saw a beautiful piping crow perched on the garden fence, repeating the noise of a whistle.
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Many bird enthusiasts keep a piping crow for its ability to imitate household sounds.
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The piping crow is admired for its impressive mimicry of other birds' calls.
Synonyms
A black and white Australian bird about the size of a crow that sings and copies sounds
A black and white bird like a crow that sings a pleasant song and copies other sounds
A bird like the Australian magpie that makes loud musical calls
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'piping' (uttering a thin, high-pitched sound) modifies 'crow', so the meaning 'a crow that pipes or makes high-pitched/mimicking sounds' is directly derivable from the parts. This follows a straightforward adjective+noun pattern common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Piping crow may come from the bird's sound: piping means making a high, clear, whistle-like note and crow shows it is a crow-sized black bird. People often kept it in cages because it could 'mimic' whistles and household noises, so the name came to mean a crow-sized bird known for copying sounds.
