Eagle

How to spell eagle

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce eagle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eagle mean?

1. nounA large bird of prey with keen eyesight, powerful talons, and broad wings.
2. nounIn golf, a score of two strokes under par on a single hole.

Eagle in a sentence

• A bald eagle circled high above the river before diving for fish.

• He sank a long putt for an eagle on the par-five tenth hole.

• The wildlife reserve protects the nesting site of a rare golden eagle.

• An eagle early in the round put her three shots ahead of the field.

Where does eagle come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the early 1300s from the Old French aigle, which itself descended from the Latin aquila, meaning simply 'eagle'. The Latin aquila is often linked to aquilus, meaning 'dark' or 'blackish', perhaps a reference to the bird's brown plumage, though scholars are not certain about that connection. Before borrowing the French and Latin form, Old English had used its own native word for the bird, erne, which survives today only as a poetic term for the sea eagle. The same aquila root also gave the world the word 'aquiline', describing a nose that curves like an eagle's beak. The spelling trap lies in the ending: the word sounds as though it should finish in '-le' alone, but it keeps the soft 'g' from its French ancestor, giving the slightly counter-intuitive '-gle'.

How the word is built

• eagl- (from Old French aigle, Latin aquila: eagle)
• -e