Forms: α. 1 stáneʓella, stánʓella, -ʓilla, -ʓylla, 5 stanyel, 7–8 staniel, 7 stanniell, 9 dial. stanniel, 7–9 Sc. stainyell; also corruptly 7 stallion. β. 7 stannell, 7–9 stannel. See also STANCHEL, STONEGALL. [OE. stáneʓella, stánʓella, lit. ‘stone-yeller’ f. stán STONE sb. + *ʓella agent-n. f. ʓellan to YELL (in OE. poetry used of the cry of the hawk).
The corrupt form stallion (quot. 1601 in 1 α) may have had dialectal currency; cf. the converse mispronunciation staniel for stallion, which is common in rustic speech. The spurious forms standgale, -gall, given in some recent dictionaries, are evolved from the etymologizing conjecture ‘stand-in-gale’ (Swainson, Prov. Names of Birds). The alleged Ger. synonym steingall, commonly cited by etymologists as cognate, is of doubtful genuineness. The 19th-c. lexicographers seem to have obtained it, directly or indirectly, from the Vocabula of Peucer and Eber (1549). But although in this glossary the word is treated as German, its source appears to be William Turner’s Avium Historia (Cologne, 1544), where steingall is said to be the English word for tinnunculus. Turner’s steingall prob. represents *steinʓall; Gesner (1555) says that it is northern English. The English ornithologists of the 17th c., following Gesner, give steingall as an English name of the bird; Willughby’s stone-gall is an etymologizing alteration of this.]
The kestrel, Tinnunculus alaudarius. Also applied contemptuously to a person, in allusion to the uselessness of the kestrel for the purposes of falconry. (Cf. KESTREL b.)
In OE. a mistranslation of L. pellicanus (pelecanus) pelican.
α. c. 825. Vesp. Psalter ci. 7. Ʒelic ʓeworden ic eam staneʓellan [L. pellicano] in woestenne.
a. 1100. Ags. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 287/10. Pellicanus, stanʓella and wanfota.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., ibid. 758/32. Hic odorincicus, a stanyel.
1590. Burel, Pilgr., in Watson’s Collect. (1709), II. 28. fhe Stainzell and the Schakerstane.
1601. Shaks., Twel. N., II. v. 124. And with what wing the stallion checkes at it?
1630. Brathwait, Eng. Gentlem. (1641), 178. Owles, cuckowes, staniels and Popinjayes.
1659. Lady Alimony, I. iii. B 1. This Musæus is a Martiallist; and if I had not held him a feverish white-liver’d staniel … that Knight of the Sun, who imploy’d me should have done his errand himself.
1838. Holloway, Prov. Dict., Stanniel, a hawk.
β. 1601. Holland, Pliny, X. xxxvii. I. 291. A Kestrill, or Stannell.
1678. Ray, Willughby’s Ornith., 84. The Kestrel, Stannel, or Stonegall.
1688. Clayton, Virginia, iv. in Phil. Trans., XVII. 989. There are several sorts of the lesser kind of Stannels.
1863. H. G. Adams, Birds of Prey, 47. The Kestrel, variously called … Stonegall, Steingall or Stannel.
Comb. 1797. Bewick, Brit. Birds, I. 36. The Kestrel…. Stannel Hawk.
Hence † Stanielry, staniel-like cowardice.
1659. Lady Alimony, V. ii. I 4. All that Puny-pen feather’d Ayry of Buzardisme and Stanielry.
