Definition
nounA diurnal predatory bird of the family Accipitridae, smaller than an eagle.
nounAny diurnal predatory terrestrial bird of similar size and appearance to the accipitrid hawks, such as a falcon.
Sentence Examples
An arrow passed through the hawk.
Mr Hawk is a kind gentleman.
The bird was half the size of a hawk.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *kap-der.?
Proto-Germanic *habukaz
Proto-West Germanic *habuk
Old English hafoc
Middle English hauk
English hawk
From Middle English hauk, hauke, hawke, havek, from Old English hafoc, from Proto-West Germanic *habuk, from Proto-Germanic *habukaz, controversially derived from Proto-Indo-European *kopuǵos, perhaps ultimately derived from *kap- (“seize”).
Cognate with West Frisian hauk, German Low German Haavke, Dutch havik, German Habicht, Swedish hök, Danish høg, Norwegian Bokmål hauk, Norwegian Nynorsk hauk, Faroese heykur, Icelandic haukur, Finnish haukka, Estonian haugas; also Latin capys, capus (“bird of prey”), Albanian gabonjë, shkabë (“eagle”), Russian ко́бец (kóbec, “falcon”), Polish kobuz (“Eurasian Hobby”)).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"He made his hawke to fly,
With hogeous showte and cry."
— c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 63, lines 47–48:
"A hawk by nature, Ellenborough strongly favoured presenting St Petersburg with an ultimatum warning that any further incursions into Persia would be regarded as a hostile act."
— 1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 106:
"“Everybody knows who were the hawks and who were the doves,” Bundy told the ExComm on the morning of October 28, after Khrushchev announced that he was withdrawing his missiles. “Today was the day of the doves.”"
— 2012 October 11 [1962], Michael Dobbs, quoting McGeorge Bundy, “The original hawks and doves”, in Foreign Policy:
"President Donald Trump has spent years playing the role of a China hawk."
— 2019, “The World in 2020”, in The Economist:
"[…] take-out sandwich from Arnie's on Jackson, then a brisk walk to Michigan Avenue in the face of the "Hawk," blowing newspapers and skirts and the gulls wheeling over the Michigan Avenue Bridge in front of […]"
— 2000 September 26, William Anderson, A Season of Flames, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 27: