[App. an alteration of LOOM2 q.v., perh. by assimilation to prec. sb.] A name for certain aquatic birds.

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  1.  Any bird of the genus Colymbus, esp. the Great Northern Diver (C. glacialis), remarkable for its loud cry.

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1634.  W. Wood, New Eng. Prosp. (1865), 34. The Loone is an ill shap’d thing like a Cormorant.

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1672.  Josselyn, New Eng. Rarities, 12. The Loone is a Water Fowl, alike in shape to the Wobble.

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1678.  Ray, Willughby’s Ornith., 341. Greatest speckled-Diver, or Loon.

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1759.  B. Stillingfl., trans. Biberg’s Econ. Nature, Misc. Tracts (1762), 90. The diver or loon … lays also two eggs.

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1766.  Pennant, Zool. (1768), II. 414. On the Thames they [the grey speckled divers] are called Sprat loons, for they attend that fish during its continuance in the river.

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1831.  A. Wilson & Bonaparte’s Amer. Ornith., III. 255. Colymbus glacialis … Great Northern Diver, or Loon.

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1839.  Marryat, Diary Amer., Ser. I. I. 187. Listening to the whistling of the solitary loon.

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1860.  All Year Round, No. 75. 586. The loons hallooed and laughed at our approach.

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1880.  Mary Fitzgibbon, Trip to Manitoba, ix. 115. Silence was around us, broken only by the weird cry of the loon diving in the distant bay.

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  2.  a. The Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus). b. The Little Grebe or Dabchick (P. fluviatilis or minor).

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1678.  Ray, Willughby’s Ornith., 339. The greater Loon or Arsfoot. Ibid., 340. The Didapper, or Dipper, or Dobchick, or small Doucker, Loon, or Arsfoot.

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1766.  Pennant, Zool. (1768), II. 395, 396.

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1828.  Fleming, Hist. Brit. Anim., 131. P[odiceps] cristatus,… Greater Loon. Ibid., 132. P. minor,… Small Loon.

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1880.  E. C. Taylor, in Times, 28 Sept., 4/4. Loon is a name for a small bird of the grebe tribe, and much better known as the dabchick.

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  3.  attrib., as loon-skin.

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1807.  P. Gass, Jrnl., 166. Some have robes made of muskrat skins … and I saw some of loon-skins.

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  Hence Looning nonce-wd., the cry of the loon.

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1857.  Thoreau, Maine W. (1894), 307. This of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear.

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