Recent Examples on the WebOn Sunday, Blake posted a photo to Instagram of her kissing Emmanuel on the beak. Elliot Lewis, NBC News, 19 July 2022 But a new study suggests that their head and beak act like a stiff hammer for optimal pecking performance rather a shock-absorbing system to cushion the brain. Viviane Callier, Scientific American, 14 July 2022 If the skull really was absorbing shocks, then upon each peck, the brain should decelerate far less than the beak—just as when a car hits a bump, its body jerks less than its wheels do. Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 14 July 2022 For the study, Dr. Hughes and her colleagues looked at a set of physical traits — body size, beak dimension and shape, and leg and wing length — extracted from 8,455 avian species in natural history museum collections.New York Times, 21 July 2022 The swan began to slowly raise its head: a pink-violet beak with a crimson edge and a blue-violet neck, each feather of which shimmered in the sun. Vladimir Sorokin, Harper’s Magazine , 20 July 2022 There is the Cassia crossbill, a finch with a twisty beak found in a single county in Idaho.New York Times, 3 Mar. 2022 As for cruel, one afternoon a crow buzzed through our backyard, something big and squirming in its beak. John Kelly, Washington Post, 30 May 2022 Some use their hard beak to drill into the shells of clams. Erin Spencer, The Conversation, 9 May 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English bec, from Anglo-French, from Latin beccus, of Gaulish origin