linnet

From Old French linette, from lin (“flax”), from the bird's fondness for the seeds of flax, the source of linen and Old English līnete, līnetwige (“linnet”) (> dialectal English lintwhite).

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪnɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪnɪt

linnet (plural linnets)

1. A small passerine bird, the common linnet (Linaria cannabina, syn. Carduelis cannabina), in the finch family Fringillidae, native to Europe, western Asia, and north Africa.
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XXI, page 36:

     ⁠I do but sing because I must,
     And pipe but as the linnets sing:
     And unto one her note is gay,
     ⁠For now her little ones have ranged;
     ⁠And unto one her note is changed,
     Because her brood is stol’n away.

   • 1890, Robert Bridges, The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges, Book I, V:

     I heard a linnet courting
     His lady in the spring […]

2. (US) A house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus), of North America.

• (common linnet et al): lintwhite (archaic)

linnet

1. definite singular of linne