magpie
Plural: magpies
Noun
- A long-tailed crow with black and white plumage.
- long-tailed black-and-white crow that utters a raucous chattering call
- someone who collects things that have been discarded by others
- an obnoxious and foolish and loquacious talker
- One of several kinds of bird in the family Corvidae, especially Pica pica.
- A superficially similar Australian bird, Gymnorhina tibicen, in the family Artamidae.
- Someone who displays a magpie-like quality such as hoarding or stealing objects.
- A fan or member of Newcastle United F.C.
- The third circle on a target, between the inner and outer.
- A halfpenny.
- A pattern resembling the pied plumage of a magpie.
Verb
- To mark with patches of black and white or light and dark.
- To steal or hoard (items) as magpies are believed to do.
- To talk idly; to talk about other people's private business.
Examples
- He was a magpie for letters, always collecting the high-value tiles for big plays.
Origin / Etymology
From Mag, a nickname for Margaret that was used to denote a chatterer, + archaic pie (“magpie”), from Old French pie, from Latin pīca, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- (“woodpecker, magpie”). Displaced native Old English agu, "magpie".
Synonyms
babbler, chatterbox, chatterer, pack rat, prater, scavenger, spouter, Eurasian magpie, European magpie, chatter, common magpie, gossip, maggie, mottle, pica, pie, piet
Scrabble Score: 11
magpie: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordmagpie: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
magpie: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary