heron

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English heiroun, also heroun and hern,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman heiroun, also hayrun and heyrun,^[5] and Old French hairon, heron (about 1150 in Old French), now héron.^[5][6][7][8] The French word is of Germanic origin,^[9][10][11] probably from Frankish *haigiro;^[6][3][7] the OED says only that it is from a Germanic form cognate with Old Saxon hēgero and Old High German heigaro.^[5] Related forms are Old Norse hegri, Swedish häger and Danish hejre.^[6][7][5] According to Barnhart, Hoad and the OED these are dissimilated variants of a form beginning “hr-”, seen in Old High German reigaro, German Reiher, Dutch reiger and Old English hrāgra (“heron”), which did not survive into Middle English.^[7][8][5][6] The word is probably imitative of the bird's cry:^[8][12][5] Barnhart, Klein and Merriam-Webster compare Lithuanian krỹkšti (“to shriek”) and Welsh cryg (“hoarse”),^[7][3][4] and the OED thinks the same imitative base may be seen in raven.^[5] The Germanic word also passed into other Romance languages, giving Italian airone, Spanish airón and Catalan agró.^[5] Egret is from the same source.^[6][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A long-legged wading bird: about 1300, as hayroun, and 1302, as heyrun, according to Barnhart, who finds the word as a surname, Hayrun, in 1124–30;^[7][14] Etymonline dates it to about 1300.^[6] The OED's first quotation is from the Ayenbite of Inwit (1340).^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word also meant the heron as food, and a sege or bevei of herons was a flock of them.^[2] Chaucer used the word three times.^[15] The shortened form hern was common enough that Johnson (1755) noted that the word was then "commonly pronounced hern";^[16] it is now archaic, poetic or dialectal,^[11] surviving mainly in personal names and place names.^[12] From 1544, in William Turner, the word was used with distinguishing words for the many species of the family.^[5] Heronry, a place where herons breed, is recorded from the 17th century.^[8]

Timeline

• 1124–30 – Hayrun, as a surname in Anglo-Norman.^[7][14]
• c. 1300 – hayroun, the wading bird.^[7][6]
• 1340 – heron, in the Ayenbite of Inwit.^[5]
• 1544 – with distinguishing words, any bird of the heron family.^[5]
• 1755 – Johnson notes the pronunciation hern.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of various long-necked, long-legged wading birds of the family Ardeidae, with a long pointed bill and grey or white plumage, that feed on fish and other water animals: A heron stood motionless in the shallows.^[17][4][5]

Word family

• heronry
• black-crowned night heron
• great blue heron
• great white heron
• green heron
• night heron
• purple heron
• tricolored heron

Related words

• egret
• aigrette
• raven

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
14. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
15. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
16. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins