Wordy Wednesday: Eyas

I have no rhyme or reason for this 'word of the day'. I just thought it was an interesting word. I don't know if I knew it before. I want to say I read about it in some National Geographic. This familiar feeling about the word is floating about at the back of my brain. Anyway, just relaxing now that the biggest headache of the move is over. Things are boxed, loaded in crates and gone. We are left with a huge, empty space. Dinner appointments seem to keep falling through. Scheduling conflicts due to other people. Oh well, microwave macaroni & cheese sounds good. Again. Is it bad manners to call back other people you turned down because you already had something planned and go, Oh wait, now I'm free. It's been a first come, first serve (us) system so far. We had dinner's with people almost every night this week. So far, they've canceled the night before or day of; we haven't done one yet. And a future one has been canceled. Oh well, we need to use up those 4 cans of tuna, 3 bags of frozen vegetables and bag of pretzels left in our kitchen. Then again, there is always Otlob.

eyas • \EYE-us\ • noun

: an unfledged bird; specifically : a nestling hawk

Example Sentence:

It took about six weeks for the eyas to mature into a fully grown peregrine falcon.

Did you know?

"Eyas" is a funny-sounding word that exists because of a mistake. In the 15th century, Middle English speakers made an incorrect assumption about the word "neias," which comes from the Anglo-French "niais" ("fresh from the nest"). "A neias" sounded like "an eias" to their ears, so the word lost that initial "n," eventually becoming "eyas." (There are other words in English that were created in this same fashion; for example, "an apron" used to be "a napron.") The change in spelling may have been suggested by other Middle English words like "ey" ("egg") and "eyry," which was a spelling of "aerie," the hawk's nest where an eyas would be found.

*word of the day courtesy of Merriam-Webster online*