GREAT AUK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Great auk

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Great auk

noun

Large flightless auk of rocky islands off northern Atlantic coasts; extinct. Synonym: Pinguinus impennis.

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Etymology of 'Great auk'

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"Great auk" Quotes from Famous Books

... to whom a wood-pigeon's nest is something apart and distinct from the nest of the magpie, but to your unsophisticated amateur a nest that is large may be anything—rook's, magpie's, pigeon's, or great auk's. To such an one the only true test lies in the eggs. Solvitur ambulando. Barrett laid the pill-boxes, containing the precious specimens he had found in the nest at the top of the hill, at the foot of the tree, ...

— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

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... thus killed with man's most primitive weapon was a specimen of the great auk—a bird which is now extinct. It was the size of a large goose, with a coal-black head and back, short wings, resembling the flippers of a seal, which assisted it wonderfully in the water, but were useless for flight, broad webbed feet, and legs set so far back that on land ...

— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

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... easily support abundance of this big game, together with geese, duck and curlews. It is wrong to say that such people can safely have their fling for a few years more. None of the nobler forms of wild life have any chance against modern facilities of uncontrolled destruction. What happened to the great auk and the Labrador duck in the Gulf? What happened to the musk-ox in Greenland? What is happening everywhere to every form of beneficial and preservable wild life that is not being actively protected to-day? Then, ...

— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

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