Dictionary

winterling en · NOUN

Etymology

From winter + -ling.

Meanings

1. A yearling animal, typically one born in the winter.
   • Under the grey skies, the rain and the sleet of January, few more cheerless scenes could be found than the moorland and the morass within it; […] Quick to accept Nature's bounty for the winterlings, the otter, when satisfied that no eye observed her, took them between her lips, carried them from the gloomy hover, and laid them on a tussock which screened her where she crouched, ready to protect them. 1909, Enys Tregarthen, The Life Story of an Otter:
   • In the river / there are cold things: / some alive, winterlings, / hibernating in the way one sleeps in moving water, / and some stones. Tucker Lieberman, Wild Mushrooms: Poems of Change (page 11)

Forms