• owl •
Pronunciation: æw(e)l • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Any member of the nocturnal birds of prey of the order of Strigiformes, with a hooked bill, round head, forward set eyes, fluffy plumage that allows noiseless flight, and with a reputation of wisdom.
Notes: Here is a common enough word, interesting because of its history. It comes with several lexical relatives, including adjectives owly and owlish and a diminutive, owlet. The place where owls live is an owlery and where they are kept is called an owl-cote. It is used as a verb regionally in the US to mean "imitating the hoot of an owl" in order to locate birds when hunting.
In Play: 
The literal meaning of this word refers to a type of bird: "Walking home that night, Carlyle felt a thump on his head. It took him a few minutes to figure out that an owl had absconded with his toupee." I'll bet the owl was as surprised as Carlyle when she tried to feed it to her owlets. This word may also be used figuratively: "Iain is a wise old owl who had made good use of his many years on Earth."
Word History: In Old English today's Good Word was ule, but by Middle English it had become oule. Old English came by its word from PIE ul- "to hoot, howl", source also of howl and ululate. The word for "owl" descended from this word in many IE languages: Sanskrit ulUka, Greek hylaux, Latin ulula, Hindi ulloo, Nepali ullu, German Eule, and Dutch uil. In the sense of "howl" we find its offspring in Sanskrit ululu-, Latin ululare, Greek hylao ("I howl"), French huler, Portuguese uivar, Spanish aullar, Lithuanian ulóti, and Albanian ulërimë. (Two years ago a mystery woman named Joanne suggested we write up today's widely traveled Good Word.)
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