bottletit

bottletit

English

Etymology

From bottle +‎ tit, from the shape of its nest[1].

Noun

bottletit (plural bottletits)

  1. Synonym of long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus. [19th c.]
    • 1831, James Rennie, Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds‎[2], page 528:
      The bottle tit (Parus caudatus,) flits with great quickness among the branches of trees, and finds on the very smooth bark its particular food,
    • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor‎[3], volume 2, page 72:
      The Bottletit—the nest and the bough are always put in glass cases; it’s a long hanging nest, like a bottle, with a hole about as big as a sixpence, and there’s mostly as many as eighteen eggs; they’ve been known to lay thirty-three.

References

  1. ^ Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, New York: Macmillan, 1961, p. 84[1]
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