coscoroba

English

Etymology

Not certain. From a local South American (perhaps specifically Chilean) name,[1] which probably entered English via Spanish; perhaps related to Tupi casaroba, saroba.[2][3]

Noun

coscoroba (plural coscorobas)

  1. A bird of the genus Coscoroba, the only swan not belonging to Cygnus.
    • 1950, Parks & Recreation:
      Their bills and legs are pink. The two babies are very light grey with dark markings. The coscorobas built a nest in February with twigs and brush provided by their keepers. The female laid two eggs, but one rolled into the pool and the other [...]
    • 1969, Sidney Dillon Ripley, A paddling of ducks:
      The coscorobas have a wonderfully detached, rather languid manner of rising from the water and flying, well befitting their aristocratic air. Graceful, too, in their smaller proportion were the brown or Chilean pintails, [...]
    • 1972, Animal Kingdom:
      The history of the coscorobas at the Bronx Zoo is of particular interest because they were among the earliest acquisitions to the society's bird collection; four coscorobas from Brazil arrived on October 2, 1899, just a little over one month before [...]
    • 1977, National Zoological Park (U.S.), Annual Report - National Zoological Park:
      The blacks produced four cygnets, the black-necks three, and the coscorobas six. Only one black swan cygnet died. Two coscoroba cygnets, unable to compete with their siblings, were taken at 28 days and hand-reared.

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References
  1. James A. Jobling, Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names (2010, →ISBN), page 120: coscoroba Local Chilean name
  2. William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1914), “coscoroba”, in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, revised edition, volumes I (A–C), New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
  3. Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius's 1863 Glossaria linguarum brasiliensium also compared casaroba, saroba to picaçuroba, but that name is said to have a different derivation in the Arquivos de zoologia do estado de São Paulo (1951), volume 7, page 249: "Esta denominação, que deriva do gosto peculiar da carne, é hoje em dia ainda a mais comum; ela corresponde precisamente ao nome túpico picaçuroba (de picaçu, pomba e rob, amargo)."
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