1. A species of small hawk (Falco tinnunculus, or Tinnunculus alaudarius), also called stannel or windhover, remarkable for its habit of sustaining itself in the same place in the air with its head to the wind. The name is extended to about 15 foreign species of the restricted genus Tinnunculus.

b. fig., or in fig. context, applied to persons, usually with contemptuous force.

Brit. /f

i/, U.S. /f

1. Love of learning and literature; the branch of knowledge that deals with the historical, linguistic, interpretative, and critical aspects of literature; literary or classical scholarship. Now chiefly U.S.
By the late 19th cent. this general sense had become rare, but it was revived, principally in the United States, in the early 20th cent. For a fuller discussion of this, see A. Morpurgo Davies Hist. Linguistics (1998) 4 I. 22.

1522 J. SKELTON Why come ye nat to Court in Compl. Eng. Poems (1983) 292 Nor of philosophy, Nor of philology, Nor of good pollycy, Nor of astronomy. 1612 J. SELDEN in M. Drayton Poly-olbion I. Pref. sig. A4, This later age..hath, in our greatest Latine Critiques..so receiued that Saturnian Language, that, to Students in Philology, it is now grown familiar. a1661 T. FULLER Worthies (1662) I. 26 Philology properly is Terse and Polite Learning, melior literatura... But we take it in the larger notion, as inclusive of all human liberal Studies. 1669 T. GALE Court of Gentiles: Pt. I I. I. x. 50 Philologie, according to its original, and primitive import..implies an universal love, or respect to human Literature. 1702 C. MATHER Magnalia Christi II. v. 18/1 Such Philology as that of Suidas and Hesychius. 1776 G. CAMPBELL Philos. of Rhetoric I. I. v. 150 All the branches of philology, such as history, civil, ecclesiastic, and literary; grammar, languages, jurisprudence, and criticism. 1818 H. HALLAM View Europe Middle Ages IX. ii, Philology, or the principles of good taste, degenerated through the prevalence of school-logic. 1892 Athenæum 25 June 816/1 The fact that philology is not a mere matter of grammar, but is in the largest sense a master-science, whose duty is to present to us the whole of ancient life, and to give archæology its just place by the side of literature. 1922 O. JESPERSEN Lang. iii. 64 In this book I shall use the word ‘philology’ in its continental sense, which is often rendered in English by the vague word ‘scholarship’, meaning thereby the study of the specific culture of one nation. 1947 E. H. STURTEVANT Introd. Ling. Sci. i. 7 Philology is a word with a wide range of meaning. I use it here to designate the study of written documents. 1980 Yale Rev. Winter 312 Philology meant, and still ought to mean, the general study of literature. 2004 Hispanic Rev. 72 442 The bewildering intertextuality that has become the very essence of modern philology.

2. Chiefly depreciative. Love of talk or argument. Obs.

1623 H. COCKERAM Eng. Dict., Phylologie, loue of much babling. 1654 R. WHITLOCK 195 Whereas hee [sc. Seneca] complaineth Philosophy was turned into Philology; may not we too sadly complain, most of our Christianity is become Discoursive noise? 1678 R. L'ESTRANGE tr. Epistles iii. 20 in Seneca's Morals Abstracted (1679), By which means, Philosophy is now turn'd to Philology.

3. The branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of languages or language families; the historical study of the phonology and morphology of languages; historical linguistics. See also comparative philology at COMPARATIVE adj. 1b.
This sense has never been current in the United States, and is increasingly rare in British use. Linguistics is now the more usual term for the study of the structure of language, and (often with qualifying adjective, as historical, comparative, etc.) has generally replaced philology.

1716 M. DAVIES Athenæ Britannicæ III. 102 Harduin has there several erudite Remarks upon Philology: especially upon the Pronunciation and Dialects of the Greek Tongue. 1749 D. HARTLEY Observ. Man I. iii. 353 Philology, or the Knowledge of Words, and their Significations. 1816 J. GILCHRIST Philos. Etymol. p. vii, Whether that gentleman shall choose a lexicographic department in the field of philology. 1838 W. B. WINNING (title) Manual of comparative philology. 1852 J. S. BLACKIE On Stud. Lang. 7 Philology unfolds the genesis of those laws of speech, which Grammar contemplates as a finished result. 1902 L. MEAD Word-coinage vi, Professor Bréal has blazed the way for future explorers in the wilderness of philology. 1964 R. H. ROBINS Gen. Ling. i. 6 In British usage philology is generally equivalent to comparative philology, an older and still quite common term for what linguists technically refer to as comparative and historical linguistics. 2002 Isis 93 503/1 The Leipzig neogrammarian philologists, who rejected Indo-European philology for a universal science of language.

Crow

Crow (n.)

O.E. crawe, imitative of bird's cry. Phrase eat crow is probably based on the notion that the bird is edible when boiled but hardly agreeable; first attested 1851, Amer.Eng., but said to date to War of 1812 (Walter Etecroue turns up 1361 in the Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London). Crow's foot "wrinkle around the corner of the eye" is late 14c. Phrase as the crow flies first recorded 1800.  

- Crow

Indian tribe of the American Midwest, the name is a rough translation of their own name, Apsaruke.

- Crow (v.)

O.E. crawian "make a loud noise like a crow;" sense of "exult in triumph" is 1522, perhaps in part because the English crow is a carrion-eater.
- Crow¹ noun 1. (Zool) cuervo m; 2. (cry — of rooster) cacareo