warble
pronunciation
How to pronounce warble in British English:
UK [ˈwɔ:bl]
How to pronounce warble in American English:
US [ˈwɔrbl]
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- Noun:
- a lumpy abscess under the hide of domestic mammals caused by larvae of a botfly or warble fly
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- Verb:
- sing or play with trills, alternating with the half note above or below
- sing by changing register; sing by yodeling
Word Origin
- warble
- warble: [14] The etymological notion underlying the word warble is of ‘whirling around’; its application to sounds, originally in the sense ‘whirl of notes, trill’, is a secondary development. It was borrowed from Old Northern French werbler, a derivative of the noun werble ‘trill, melody’. And this in turn came from Frankish *hwirbilōn ‘whirl, trill’, which is distantly related to English whirl. (Warble ‘swelling on an animal’s back caused by insect larva’ [16] is a completely different word. It may have been borrowed from the now obsolete Swedish compound varbulde, literally ‘pustumour’, or a related Scandinavian word.)
- warble (v.)
- late 14c., from Old North French werbler "to sing with trills and quavers" (Old French guerbloiier), from Frankish *werbilon (cognate with Old High German wirbil "whirlwind," German Wirbel "whirl, whirlpool, tuning peg, vertebra," Middle Dutch wervelen "to turn, whirl"); see whirl (v.). Related: Warbled; warbling. The noun is recorded from late 14c.
Example
- 1. L 'll warble like a little bird .
- 2. She represents a power that might enable milton to warble a right or proper song .
- 3. For instance even if a vanished bird was someday reconstituted from its genes would it warble with the same fluency as its ancestors ?
- 4. These include drugs that do not require a doctor 's approval as well as warble herbal treatments .
- 5. An abscessed boillike swelling on the back of cattle , deer , and certain other animals , caused by the larva of a warble fly .