gannet
Americannoun
noun
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any of several heavily built marine birds of the genus Morus (or Sula ), having a long stout bill and typically white plumage with dark markings: family Sulidae, order Pelecaniformes (pelicans, cormorants, etc) See also booby
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slang a gluttonous or greedy person
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of gannet
before 900; Middle English; Old English ganot; akin to Dutch gent gander
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In May he dressed as a giant gannet while running as a candidate for Scottish Parliament to call for the end of the Guga hunt, a centuries old Hebridean tradition to hunt the bird.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 2026
The ban could also benefit two other endangered seabirds, the Cape gannet and Cape cormorant, that also rely on sardine and anchovy as their primary food source, Waller says.
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 17, 2023
Scuttle the boy seagull is now Scuttle the female gannet.
From Washington Times ● May 25, 2023
“It’s so wow,” said Magella Guillemette, a pre-eminent gannet researcher at the University of Quebec in Rimouski, as he described watching the feeding frenzy from his small boat in the thick of it.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 12, 2022
There was no sound but the ice-cold surge, the cry of a gannet, invisible in grayness above me.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
Most people get upset and angry at the sight of gannets sitting on nests of nylon ropes, and whales drifting ashore with their stomachs full of plastic.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 13, 2024
The paper documented the population collapses in seabird communities around the world, from kittiwakes in the North Sea to murres in the Gulf of Alaska to gannets and penguins off the coast of Namibia.
From Slate ● Feb. 4, 2024
Avian flu has decimated seabird populations around Scotland's coast, including gannets on Bass Rock and skuas in Shetland.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2023
Bempton Cliffs is a site of special scientific interest where half a million seabirds, including puffins, gannets, kittiwakes and guillemots, breed each year.
From BBC ● May 19, 2023
As we went down, the cliffs in back of us rose higher and higher, and the gannets and kestrels wheeled and dipped.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
