chickadee N. Amer.
(tʃɪkəˈdiː)
Also chicadee.
[Named from its note.]
The Black-cap Titmouse (Parus atricapillus) of N. America. Also used as a term of endearment to a woman.
| 1838 Thoreau Jrnl. 23 Sept. (1949) I. 60 The chickadee is more than usually familiar. 1854 ― Walden iv. (1886) 124 The chicadee lisps amid the evergreens. 1884 E. P. Roe in Harper's Mag. Mar. 615/1 We all know the lively black-capped chickadees. 1940 Times 20 May 4/5 Mr. [W. C.] Fields is magnificently flamboyant and rhetorical..but, hard as he works, My Little Chickadee obstinately refuses to gather momentum. 1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §185/2 Pet names; terms of endearment. (Frequently prefaced ‘my’ or ‘little’.) Angel,..chickadee. 1964 A. L. Thomson New Dict. Birds 823/2 In North America some Parus spp. are called ‘chickadees’, the best known being the Blackcapped Chickadee P. atricapillus. 1967 Boston Sunday Herald 26 Mar. ii. 9/7 Here in the woods was the usual sparse sprinkling of chickadees and nothing else. 1968 Listener 23 May 678/1 Mr Durrell, looking so much like a sober W. C. Fields that one expected him to address Joan Bakewell as ‘my little chickadee’. |