widgeon
Americannoun
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widgeons,
plural
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widgeon
plural
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any of several common freshwater ducks related to the mallards and teals in the genus Anas, having metallic green flight feathers, a white wing patch, and a buff or white forehead, including A. penelope of Eurasia and North Africa, A. sibilatrix of South America, and the baldpate, A. americana, of North America.
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Obsolete. a fool.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of widgeon
First recorded in 1505–15; perhaps from an Anglo-French correspondent of French vigeon, from Vulgar Latin; compare Medieval Latin vipiō “kind of crane” (derivative of vip- imitative of a bird's cry)
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:
Also spotted, but in fewer numbers, were snow geese, buffleheads, redheads, goldeneyes, American widgeon, ruddy, ring-necked, canvasbacks, scaup and wood ducks.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 15, 2015
Geese, black ducks, mallard, teal and widgeon have darkened the skies over the bay and fattened themselves in its marshes.
From Time Magazine Archive
The widgeon, who had slept on water, came whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
The mallard and widgeon, coming in high with the gale behind, were gone before they had arrived.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
The bitterns boomed and the marsh harriers skimmed over the reeds and millions of widgeon and mallard and tufted ducks flew about m various wedges, looking like champagne bottles balanced on a nimbus of wings.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
From Susquehanna Flats to the Suisun marshes and from the Kankakee marshes to Pas a l'Outre all species of wild waterfowl had been scarce; canvasbacks, redheads, ruddy ducks, teals, gadwalls, widgeons, shovelers especially so.
From Time Magazine Archive
The blue and green-winged teal had already begun to fly; canvasbacks, mallards, widgeons, pintails, shovelers and redheads would follow soon, before and with the frost.
From Time Magazine Archive
The wild-ducks and widgeons are on the islets; The personators of your ancestors feast and enjoy themselves.
From The Shih King From the Sacred Books of the East Volume 3 by James Legge
They were widgeons; but the most singular thing that was now observed by our voyageurs was the terms upon which these three kinds of birds lived with each other.
From Popular Adventure Tales by Mayne Reid
You will recollect we were speaking of ducks, teals, and widgeons; and we come now to the next clause of the verse—wild geese and swans.
From Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2) by John Lyde Wilson
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.
