Contextualizebeta

eiderdown

noun

Etymology

From eider + down.

  1. derived from *dʰewh₂-✻
  2. derived from *dūnom✻
  3. derived from *dʰewh₂-✻ — “smoke, haze, dust”
  4. inherited from *dūnaz✻
  5. inherited from *dūnā✻ — “sandhill, dune”
  6. inherited from dūn
  7. inherited from doune
  8. compounded as eiderdown — “eider + down”

Definitions

  1. The down of the eider duck, used for stuffing pillows and quilts.

    • A great sea lifted us high and, crashing down with a deafening roar, carried us swiftly along on light foam as soft as eiderdown.

  2. A quilt stuffed with this down.

    • The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank.
    • She jerked up in bed, clutching the eiderdown; her heart beat. What could it be?

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for eiderdown. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA