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Penguin   Listen
noun
Penguin  n.  
1.
(Zool.) Any bird of the order Impennes, or Ptilopteri. They are covered with short, thick feathers, almost scalelike on the wings, which are without true quills. They are unable to fly, but use their wings to aid in diving, in which they are very expert. See King penguin, under Jackass. Note: Penguins are found in the south temperate and antarctic regions. The king penguins (Aptenodytes Patachonica, and Aptenodytes longirostris) are the largest; the jackass penguins (Spheniscus) and the rock hoppers (Catarractes) congregate in large numbers at their breeding grounds.
2.
(Bot.) The egg-shaped fleshy fruit of a West Indian plant (Bromelia Pinguin) of the Pineapple family; also, the plant itself, which has rigid, pointed, and spiny-toothed leaves, and is used for hedges. (Written also pinguin)
Arctic penguin (Zool.), the great auk. See Auk.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penguin" Quotes from Famous Books



... the surface. In the Zoological Gardens I have seen the otter treat a fish in the same manner, much as a cat does a mouse: I do not know of any other instance where dame Nature appears so wilfully cruel. Another day, having placed myself between a penguin (Aptenodytes demersa) and the water, I was much amused by watching its habits. It was a brave bird; and till reaching the sea, it regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows would have stopped ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... to part of the West Indies about Cape Breton, shaping their course thence north-eastwards, vntill they camme to the Island of Penguin," etc.—The voyage of master Hore, in The principall navigations, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various

... of ornament, and pass their tanks without paying further heed to them. This is not the case with respect to the diving birds, which are beyond all question the centre of attraction in the fish-house. The birds comprise a darter, a cormorant, a guillemot, and a penguin. The first-named is seldom seen in this country. It is a largish bird with webbed feet, long thin neck, and spear-like bill. When swimming in the water with its body entirely submerged, it looks not unlike a snake ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... steps were required, and many organs had to undergo modifications from the rudimental condition in which only they had as yet existed. We still see remaining an antitypal sketch of a wing adapted for flight in the scaly flapper of the penguin, and limbs first concealed beneath the skin, and then weakly protruding from it, were the necessary gradations before others should be formed fully adapted for locomotion.[C] Many more of these modifications should we behold, and more complete series of them, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... upon reviving, in the cabin of a large whaling-ship (the Penguin) bound to Nantucket. Several persons were standing over me, and Augustus, paler than death, was busily occupied in chafing my hands. Upon seeing me open my eyes, his exclamations of gratitude and joy excited alternate laughter and tears from the rough-looking ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere. A momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at lunch. What was it gave them their look of strange detachment? Mrs. Dennant was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Republic showing signs of activity. Involves serious menace to our pacific plans. Issue ultimatum. Hear later that President is a penguin. As, however, withdrawal of ultimatum is out of the question, have despatched warships. Speech to my people:—"Owing to this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various

... Bay, does not offer the same advantages; for it is twenty-two miles broad from Maria's Islands to Penguin Island, and completely exposed to the winds from south to south-east. This bay consequently does not afford the same excellent anchorage as D'Entrecasteaux's Channel. It contains, however, some few nooks, in which vessels may take shelter in case of necessity. The best of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... symbol of something thought than the portrait of something seen. And so we wander farther and farther into the gloomy depths, adding ever new specimens to our pre-historic menagerie, including the rare find of a bird that looks uncommonly like the penguin. Mind, by the way, that you do not fall into that round hole in the floor. It is enormously deep; and more than forty cave-bears have left their skeletons at the bottom, amongst which your skeleton would be a ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... with something of demoniac temper got into its calyx, so that it quarrels with, and bites the corolla;—something of gluttonous and greasy habit got into its leaves; a discomfortable sensuality, even in its desolation. Perhaps a penguin-ish life would be truer of it than a piggish, the nest of it being indeed on the rock, or morassy rock-investiture, like a ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... tenant of a lighthouse, for, during a few weeks of the summer, I had been visiting the Penguin Light, some four or five miles distant up the coast. It was a tall and far-reaching structure, standing upon a jutting point of rock—almost the duplicate of the Beacon Ledge; the two lights glimmering at each other ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... cursed and flung up their arms despairingly. A penguin, attracted by their cries, waddled solemnly over to them and regarded ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... perhaps, be considered as nascent compared with the udders of a cow—Ovigerous frena, in certain cirripedes, are nascent branchiae—in [illegible] the swim bladder is almost rudimentary for this purpose, and is nascent as a lung. The small wing of penguin, used only as a fin, might be nascent as a wing; not that I think so; for the whole structure of the bird is adapted for flight, and a penguin so closely resembles other birds, that we may infer that its wings have probably been modified, and reduced by natural selection, in accordance ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... vegetation but cactuses or wiry bushes with strange names; no inhabitants but insects and reptiles—lizards, spiders, snakes,—with vast tortoises which seem of immemorial age, and are coated with seaweed and the slime of the ocean. If there are any birds, it is the strange and heavy penguin, the passing albatross, or the Mother Cary's chicken, which has been called the humming bird of ocean, and here finds a place for its young. By night these birds come for their repose; at earliest dawn they take wing and ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "roller," called the Penguin because of its abbreviated wings, and which did not leave the ground, was followed on Wednesday, February 17, by a three-cylinder 25 H.P. Bleriot, which rose only thirty or forty meters. These were the first ascensions before launching into space. Then came a six-cylinder ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... thought Vivian. "The deuce you are! Oh! why did I not say a Columbian cassowary, or a Peruvian penguin, or a Chilian condor, or a Guatemalan goose, or a Mexican mastard; anything but Brazilian. Oh! unfortunate ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield



Words linked to "Penguin" :   Aptenodytes forsteri, crested penguin, Adelie penguin, Spheniscidae, Adelie, Aptenodytes patagonica, sphenisciform seabird, Spheniscus demersus, king penguin, family Spheniscidae



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