lapwing

plural lapwings

1. Any of several medium-sized wading birds belonging to the subfamily Vanellinae, within family Charadriidae.

   Lapwings are abundant winter visitors to the area but, like the Golden Plovers, vary greatly in number between years.

   2010, Clive Finlayson, Birds of the Strait of Gibraltar, page 244

   2 more examples

   Plovers and lapwings are a large, virtually worldwide family that differs from sandpipers in, among other things, having a shorter, thicker, pigeonlike bill and more robust proportions.

   1986, Steven L. Hilty, Bill Brown, A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, page 149

   The resident tropical plovers have much less pointed wings, and most of the lapwings have fairly rounded wing-tips, a wing shape apparently more adapted to aerial manoeuvrability than to long-distance migration.

   2010, Des Thompson, Ingvar Byrkjedal, Tundra Plovers, page 36

   1. The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus).
2. obsoleteA silly man.

   This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]