Nightingale

So I actually stumbled across nightingale's etymology while looking up the etymology for the word yell, and I thought it was so interesting that we've talked about the Nightingale in class without hearing its interesting etymological story. So here it is:

Nightingale, as defined by the OED, is "A small reddish-brown migratory thrush, Luscinia megarhynchos, of western Europe and northern Africa, noted for the melodious song of the male which can be heard at night as well as in the daytime." The OED also tells us that it was "originally a variant of nightgale with intrusive n before g". So, nightingale a compound of night and gale. Night means "the period of darkness after day" and is a native English word, with numerous cognates in other Germanic languages. Gale is where it gets interesting. Gale means "singing, a song" and comes from the Old English verb galan, 'to sing'. It is this galan which is related to the Old English word gellan, which we get our word yell from. Cool, huh!?


Photo courtesy of www.fwi.co.uk