Monday, 17 March 2014

[cobirds] Definition of "feral" relating to Colorado (or any) birds

COBirders,

  After following the recent thread, I thought maybe my understanding that the word “feral” is used to indicate one or more wild individuals of a normally domesticated species was wrong. So I checked our Random House College Dictionary and found out that I was not wrong.  It would be nice if specialists (in any field) would create new words rather than use ones that already have a widely accepted, but different, meaning.  By the same token, why invent a word (i.e. “juvenal”) when the adjective “juvenile” is a perfectly adequate descriptor for plumage?  Ah, the vagaries of the English language, sayeth the old Spanish professor.

Leon Bright, Pueblo

 

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