Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday July 28, 2004
aerie \EYE-ree\ , noun:
1. The bird's nest built on a lofty place, such as a cliff or mountaintop.
2. A dwelling or stronghold located in a lofty place.
The sun is beating down on the Braes of Balquhidder, at the fringes of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, as three of us, each trying to ignore a halo of midges, are peering through binoculars, surveying a cleft in a rock face where an untidy rickle of twigs indicates a golden eagle's eyrie.
-- Jim Gilchrist, "End of a golden age?", The Scotsman, August 18, 2001
Saunière regaled them with sumptuous banquets and other forms of largess, maintaining the life-style of a medieval potentate presiding over an impregnable mountain domain. In his remote and well-nigh inaccessible aerie he received a number of notable guests.
-- Michael Baigent, Holy Blood, Holy Grail
We could not afford a nicer house and all those luxuries besides; he did elaborate sums on the backs of envelopes to regretfully prove it -- and then would climb back happily to the little eyrie he'd made for himself in the attic, where he would lie on his bed listening to obscure continental stations on his radio, smoking his pipe.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg
Aerie derives from Medieval Latin aeria, "nest of a bird of prey," perhaps from Latin area, "an open space (for birds of prey like to build their nests on flat and open spaces on the top of high rocks)."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for aerie
