murmuration
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English
[edit]![](http://178.128.105.246/content-http-upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Starling_murmuration.jpg/220px-Starling_murmuration.jpg)
Etymology
[edit]1350–1400; Medieval Latin murmuratio (“murmuring, grumbling”). The “flock of starlings” sense is probably derived from the sound of the very large groups that starlings form at dusk.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (General American) IPA(key): /ˌmɝməˈɹeɪʃən/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌmɜːməˈɹeɪʃən/
- Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Noun
[edit]murmuration (countable and uncountable, plural murmurations)
- An act or instance of murmuring.
- (ornithology, collective) A flock of starlings.
- 1893 September 27, The Bazaar, the Exchange and Mart, London, page 800, column 3:
- "Oh! I wasted most of my morning crawling to a murmuration of starlings, which I foolishly mistook for congregation of plover."
- 2013 March 19, Ed Yong, “How the Science of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer and Predict the Future”, in Wired[1]:
- The same dynamics can be seen in starlings: On clear winter evenings, murmurations of the tiny blackish birds gather in Rome’s sunset skies, wheeling about like rustling cloth.
- 2017 July 29, “Solved, the riddle of starlings' aerial ballet: Birds use acrobatics to ward off creatures of prey”, in Daily Mail[2]:
- Professor Anne Goodenough, an applied ecologist at the University of Gloucestershire who led the research, said: ‘It appears murmuration has become the norm – a general way for the starlings to stay safe from predators.’
- An emergent order in a multi-agent social system.
Further reading
[edit]Flocking (behavior) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- Example of starling murmuration from YouTube.
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Medieval Latin
- English terms derived from Medieval Latin
- English 4-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/eɪʃən
- Rhymes:English/eɪʃən/4 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Ornithology
- English collective nouns
- English terms with quotations
- en:Starlings