sea-swallow
1. = flying fish. [After L. hirundo (Pliny).]
| 1598 Florio, Accola, a sea swallow, or a sea reare-mouse. 1601 Holland Pliny ix. xxvi. I. 249 The sea Swallow flieth: and it resembleth in all points the bird so called. 1611 Cotgr., Arondelle de mer, the flying fish called the sea Bat, or sea Swallow. 1664 Hubert Catal. Rarities (1665) 19 A great flying-fish or Sea Swallow. 1740 R. Brookes Art of Angling ii. liii. 171 The Flying-Fish or Sea-Swallow..is very common between the Tropicks. 1844 Linsley Fishes Connecticut in Amer. Jrnl. Sci. XLVII. 59 Dactylopterus volitans, Cuv., Sea Swallow, Long Island Sound. |
2. a. A name for any one of the terns (from their general resemblance to swallows). b. The stormy petrel, Procellaria pelagica. c. An edible swiftlet of the genus Collocalia, found in south-east Asia.
| 1647 Hexham i. App., A Sea-swallow, Een Zee-swaluwe. 1668 Charleton Onomast. 90 Hirundo Marina, the Sea-Swallow. a 1672 Willughby Ornith. (1676) 269 Larus Piscator Aldrov... The lesser Sea-Swallow. 1734 E. Albin Birds II. Pl. 88 The greater Sea Swallow. 1831 M. Russell Anc. & Mod. Egypt. xi. §3 (1832) 484 The Sterna Nilotica, or Egyptian sea-swallow. 1852 Macgillivray Brit. Birds V. 460 Thalassidroma pelagica. The Common Storm-Petrel... Sea Swallow. 1887 Hall Caine Deemster vii, The sea swallow shot over him too, with its low mournful cry. 1902 Encycl. Brit. XXVI. 310/2 Animals of economic value [in Borneo] are the sea-swallows, whose edible nests are prized as the best in the archipelago. |
3. The trepang or bêche-de-mer.
[= Du. zeezwaluw; but the second element represents the Malay name swālā.]
| 1802 Naval Chron. VIII. 380 Sea swallow (called beach de mar by the Portuguese, and trepong by the Malays). |