Treepie.

Comments

1. J.W. Brewer says

   January 2, 2025 at 5:41 pm

   Quoth wikipedia elsewhere: “Following Ericson et al. (2005), the black magpies are placed with the treepies.” Does that give rise to an implicature that “treepie” is pronounced to rhyme with “magpie”? Relevant etymology for the second morpheme may be “From Middle English pye, from Old French pie, from Latin pīca, feminine of pīcus (“woodpecker”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- (“woodpecker; magpie”). Cognate with speight. Doublet of pica.”
2. Y says

   January 2, 2025 at 5:42 pm

   pie < magpie < (again) pie < L. pica.
3. languagehat says

   January 2, 2025 at 5:55 pm

   Does that give rise to an implicature that “treepie” is pronounced to rhyme with “magpie”?

   That was my inference.

   We discussed (mag)pie back in 2011.
4. ktschwarz says

   January 2, 2025 at 6:21 pm

   No citations, no pronunciation, no etymology, nothin’.

   That’s because it used to be in one of those clogged paragraphs of combinations, under tree:

   10b. in names of animals living in or on or frequenting trees, as tree-ant, tree-bee, tree-beetle, tree-boa, tree-chafer, …

   Compounds like this were originally considered mainly as illustrations of the use of the headword and not thoroughly researched, but then in July 2023 they were separated out and all sub-entries promoted to their own pages. Sometimes, like here, that meant the explanation was left behind on the parent page.
5. ktschwarz says

   January 2, 2025 at 6:33 pm

   The Century Dictionary confirms that it’s pronounced like “magpie”, and has a nice discursive definition:

   A tree-crow of the genus Dendrocitta, of which there are eight Indian and Chinese species, among them D. leucogastra of southern India, type of the genus.
   The best-known is D. rufa, the rufous crow and gray-tailed roller of the older writers, ranging through India, Assam, and the Burmese regions to Tenasserim. This is 16 inches long, of orange-brown and sooty-brown shades, varied with black and pale gray, and with blood-red iris.

   That has a Hobson-Jobson flavor, but I couldn’t find “treepie” there.
6. Xerîb says

   January 2, 2025 at 6:53 pm

   I wonder if tree-pie is just the English translation of the genus name Dendrocitta (δένδρον ‘tree’ + κίττα ‘jay, magpie’). This name was established by John Gould (1838) ‘On a new Genus in the Family of Corvidæ’ Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, vol. 1, pages 87–90 (available here):

   On account of the arboreal habits of the birds composing the group which is thus distinguished, I propose for them the generic appellation of Dendrocitta.

   I looked briefly to see if this might be inspired by any names in South Asian languages but could not find anything. (Interesting to me: the Bengali name for Dendrocitta vagabunda is হাঁড়িচাচা hā̃ṛicācā, which which would literally seem to mean ‘pot-cācā, pot uncle’. Because it drinks toddy palm sap from the pots hung to collect it?)
7. languagehat says

   January 2, 2025 at 7:04 pm

   I wonder if tree-pie is just the English translation of the genus name Dendrocitta (δένδρον ‘tree’ + κίττα ‘jay, magpie’).

   That makes sense.
8. Jen in Edinburgh says

   January 2, 2025 at 7:14 pm

   Oystercatchers are sea-pies, which I feel like we discussed fairly recently. And magpies were originally just pies, so the disambiguation isn’t that odd.
9. Xerîb says

   January 2, 2025 at 7:16 pm

   However, tree-crow, as used in the definition, doesn’t seem to be a translation of a Latin name, as far as I can tell. Modelled on tree-pie? Alas, I have no time to look into this.
10. cuchuflete says

    January 2, 2025 at 7:51 pm

    Listen:

    https://ebird.org/species/ruftre2
11. cuchuflete says

    January 2, 2025 at 7:55 pm

    Wiki:

    “ The word “rufous” is derived from the Latin rufus, meaning “red”, and is used as an adjective in the names of many animals—especially birds—to describe the color of their skin, fur, or plumage.”
12. Jerry Friedman says

    January 2, 2025 at 9:46 pm

    I wonder if tree-pie is just the English translation of the genus name Dendrocitta (δένδρον ‘tree’ + κίττα ‘jay, magpie’).

    According to Jobling, kitta has been used in other names of the family, such as Cyanocitta, the Blue Jay and Steller’s Jay that many of us North Americans know.

    I’d imagine “tree-crow” just means a tree-dwelling crow-like bird.
13. mollymooly says

    January 2, 2025 at 10:44 pm

    I would have been much less puzzled by “tree-pie” than “treepie”.
    I know hyphenated compounds tend to evolve into closed compounds, but still.
14. Owlmirror says

    January 3, 2025 at 1:09 am

    Is there a connection between kitta and “kite”?

    Wikt, at least, sayeth nay, tracing “kite” to Germanic roots rather than Latin/Greek.
15. languagehat says

    January 3, 2025 at 8:41 am

    There couldn’t be — remember, Germanic voiceless stops correspond to IE voiced ones (e.g., ten : decem).
16. David Eddyshaw says

    January 3, 2025 at 1:04 pm

    Chambers’ dictionary mysteriously implies that English “kite” is from Brythonic, but GPC aligns with Wiktionary, saying that Welsh cud is actually a loan from Old English cýta.

    If so, it’s old enough to have provided the basis of cudyll “kestrel”, though. The usual Welsh for “kite” is barcud, where the bar- bit seems to be etymologically “bird of prey.”

    I suppose it’s conceivable that the OE really is Germanic, but that the Germanic form is itself from Celtic (there are precedents, after all.). The PIE analyses in Wiktionary look iffy.
17. David Marjanović says

    January 3, 2025 at 1:50 pm

    There’s only one for the bird: “Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gewH-d- (“to call, cry out, cry, screech”), but in any case ultimately onomatopoeic.”

    I wouldn’t have guessed, but the German cognate is Kauz, which designates various small owls.
18. Kate Bunting says

    January 4, 2025 at 9:22 am

    According to Withycombe’s ‘Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names’, ‘Magpie (Maggie Pie)’ is one of those examples of human names traditionally given to familiar birds (as in Jenny Wren, Robin Redbreast). In the cases of ‘jackdaw’ and ‘magpie’ the human name has become absorbed into the word, and of course ‘robin’ has become the full name.
19. David Eddyshaw says

    January 4, 2025 at 2:23 pm

    Kusaal actually has something like this, though not with actual human personal names (which wouldn’t really work, as such names all have specific meanings connected with the person bearing the name in question.)

    But there are quite a lot of animal names which incorporate the proclitic particle a- which appears before almost all personal names, e.g. agaʋng “pied crow”*, amus “cat”, along with not a few oddities like akɔradiem “praying mantis”, which is literally “hyena’s mother-in-law” (no idea why.)

    Folk stories with talking animals as characters are as common in West Africa as in Europe, which is presumably relevant in some way.

    * Another bird name which is confidently asserted to be onomatopoeic in several dictionaries. But the word has cognates related by regular sound changes, so if it’s really imitative in origin, the onomatopoea must presumably go back to the protolanguage. Historical onomatopoea …
20. Brett says

    January 4, 2025 at 3:15 pm

    Robin Redbreast, previously.

    Jenny Wren (although virtually nobody calls her that in America) was flapping against my front door this morning, when I first went out. However, that’s very common in South Carolina. (The Carolina Wren is the state bird of both Carolinas.) New World wrens are fairly similar to Old World wrens. I mention this because it is not the case for robins; the Anerican robin is a thrush, not particularly related to the European Robin (a flycatcher) among passerines, but sharing red-orange breast feathers.