owlet
(ˈaʊlɪt)
Also 6 oulette, owlate.
[dim. of owl: see -et1; prob. altered from the earlier howlet.]
An owl; a young owl or little owl.
| 1542 Udall Erasm. Apoph. 248 He tooke veraye eiuill reste in the nightes, by reason of an oule... A launceknight..tooke the peines to catche this oulette. 1567 J. Maplet Gr. Forest 94 b, There is a certaine Shrickowle or Owlet which when she crieth, she shricketh. 1589 Puttenham Eng. Poesie iii. xix. (Arb.) 242 As egles eyes to owlates sight. 1798 Wordsw. Idiot Boy lviii, The owlets through the long blue night Are shouting to each other still. 1832 W. Irving Alhambra II. 88 He loved his children too even as an owl loves its owlets. |
b. attrib. and Comb., as owlet-haunted adj., owlet wing; owlet light = owl-light; owlet-moth, an American name for any moth of the genus Noctua or family Noctuidæ.
| 1821 Shelley Epipsych. 221 Whose flight Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light. 1831 Carlyle in Froude Life (1882) II. 207 Ignorance eclipses all things with its owlet wings. 1862 T. W. Harris Insects injur. Veget. (ed. 3) v. 435 The injury done to vegetation by the caterpillars of the Noctuas, or owlet-moths. 1880 W. Nimmo Hist. Stirlingsh. I. vi. 99 Its owlet-haunted walls. |