Gull Meaning
/ˈɡʌl/Definition, CEFR level C2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA seabird of the genus Larus or of the subfamily Larinae.
nounAny of various pierid butterflies of the genus Cepora.
Sentence Examples
The sea gull glided on the wind.
A beautiful gull flies over the sea.
CEFR Practice Quiz
A white ____ with grey wings flew over the beach.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We saw a lonely ____ hovering above the fishing boat, hoping to catch a few scraps of discarded bait.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English gulle, from a Brythonic language (compare Breton gouelan, Welsh gwylan, and Cornish golan), from Proto-Brythonic *gwuɨlann, from Proto-Celtic *weilannā (“seagull”). Cognate with Old Irish foílenn, Scottish Gaelic faoileag. Compare French goéland, a borrowing from Breton. Eclipsed Middle English lare (borrowed from Latin larus) and Middle English mewe (from Old English mæw).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The tide was out, and we drew up amid the strong bracing smell of seaweed, with gulls screeching, wheeling around, and gliding on the wind."
— 1947 January–February, O. S. Nock, “‘The Aberdonian’ in Wartime”, in The Railway Magazine, volume 93, number 567, page 8:
"Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again.[…]For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight."
— 1970, Richard Bach, “Part One”, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story, Macmillan; republished as complete edition, Scribner, 21 October 2014, →ISBN, page 4:
"BENEDICK. [Aside] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence."
— 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:
"You'll excuse me, sir, but as you are fresh, take care to avoid the gulls; they fly about here in large flocks, I assure you, and do no little mischief at times." "I never understood that gulls were birds of prey," said I.—"Only in Oxford, sir; and here, I assure you, they bite like hawks, and pick many a poor young gentleman as bare before his three years are expired, as the crows would a dead sheep upon a common. […]""
— 1825, Bernard Blackmantle, The English Spy:
"O, but to ha' gulled him / Had been a mastery."
— 1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet Archive page), (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
Explore More C2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
A white ____ with grey wings flew over the beach.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We saw a lonely ____ hovering above the fishing boat, hoping to catch a few scraps of discarded bait.