The story
- Old French · derived fromcourlieu
- Middle English · inherited fromcurlew
- English todaycurlew
From Middle English curlew, from Old French courlieu (see French courlis), claimed to be imitative of the bird's cry but apparently assimilated with dialectal *corliu (“runner, messenger”), a variant of coureur (the bird is adept at running).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.