puffin

A puffin

From Middle English, apparently from puff + -ing, or perhaps ultimately from Middle Cornish (compare Breton poc'han (“puffin”)).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʌfɪn/
• Rhymes: -ʌfɪn

puffin (plural puffins)

1. (now obsolete) The young of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), especially eaten as food. [14th–19th c.]
2. The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) or, by extension, any of the other various small seabirds of the genera Fratercula and Lunda that are black and white with a brightly-colored beak. [from 17th c.]
   • 1894, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, The White Seal:

     Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas–the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and–so Limmershin told me–for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet.

• sea-parrot
• (UK, regional) pope

• fraterculine

From English puffin.

• IPA^(key): /py.fɛ̃/

puffin m (plural puffins)

1. shearwater

• “puffin” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).