heath hen
- noun
- /hiːθ hɛn/
- US
:
gallo de brezo
- Historians note that the heath hen, a type of prairie chicken, thrived in the extensive forests and fields of the eastern United States.
Examples
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Scientists studied the heath hen to understand the causes of its extinction and to prevent similar losses in other species.
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There were no eastern elk, no seamink, and no heath hens, A distinct subspecies of the Prairie chicken once common to the coastal barrens of New Hampshire down to Virginia.
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The heath hen was once a common bird in the grasslands of eastern North America before it became extinct.
Synonyms
A kind of prairie chicken that used to live in the northeastern United States but is no longer alive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'heath hen' is compositionally transparent: a B1 learner who knows 'heath' (uncultivated heathland) and 'hen' (female chicken) can infer it denotes a type of hen associated with heathland. Although the specific species identity and extinction status are lexical details not deducible from the parts, the basic referent (a bird living on heaths) is directly derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
The name heath hen comes from the bird's home and type: heath meant open land with low bushes where it lived and hen meant a wild chicken, so the name described the bird species, which is now 'extinct'.
