plover

plural plovers

1. Any of various wading birds of the subfamily Charadriinae.
2. AustraliaA masked lapwing (Vanellus miles).

present singular third person plovers · participle present plovering · participle past plovered · past plovered

1. To dote over, or, crowd or nestle with

   Our Dove's a fat man's tits plovering a T - shirt;

   2002, Calvin Bedient, The Violence of the Morning: Poems, page 42

   2 more examples

   Invisible twine plying merchants are unravelling the long grasses and the plovering pull of the long windstrewngrasses pluck the prince in his chest his heart his passion and love as if no tomorrow.

   1997, Barry MacSweeney, The Book of Demons, page 107

   I would blanch, I would quail and, maybe in that season, I would have plovered — plovered my head deep into my feathers and plovered away on thin, wading bird's legs.

   2000, Stuart Jeffries, Mrs Slocombe's Pussy: Growing Up in Front of the Telly, page 144

2. To hunt for plover.

   Brisler went Yesterday a plovering with a Party who killed about an hundred.

   1962, Diary and Autobiography of John Adam, page 244

   2 more examples

   Gentlemen often came from Dublin, and payed me for going into the Channel with them a plovering and fishing, and going aboard of Ships in the Bay; but once among the rest, some of these Chaps came to hire my Smack, to go into the Bay, which I let them have to my Sorrow;

   1769, John Poulter, The Discoveries of John Poulter, Alias Baxter, page 5

   There is a handsome prospect from the plains, which render very good shooting in the season of plovering.

   1865, Henry Onderonk, Queens County in Olden Times, page 87

3. To wade along the shore, examining the sand like a plover does.

   Men with nothing to do plovered the sand - edge with clam rakes that raked nothing.

   1971, John Ciardi, Lives of X., page 50

   2 more examples

   Blathwyte indicates the scale of another population of waders through recording an annual crop of 250 Lapwing eggs Vanellus vanellus being taken by 'plovering' gamekeepers.

   2021, Clive Chatters, Heathland

   If we can let the plovers do their plovering thing, then perhaps, instead of rejecting our human weirdnesses, we embrace them.

   2021, Jeffrey Cohen, Stephanie Foote, The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities, page 282

1. A minor city in Pocahontas County, Iowa, United States, named for the bird.
2. A town in Marathon County, Wisconsin, United States.
3. A town and village in Portage County, Wisconsin.