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A gosling is a young goose — the fluffy baby, before it grows adult feathers and a long neck. People use it for the bird in the first weeks or months of life. The -ling ending means “small” or “young”, the same idea as in . The word came from Old Norse, then got pulled toward the English word goose. You might also meet Gosling as a family name, but that is not this sense.
小鵝
組成From Late Middle English goslyng, an alteration (pulled toward goose) of earlier gesling, from Old Norse gæslingr / géslingr, from gás (“goose”) + -lingr (“-ling”). So: goose + -ling. Cognate with Danish gæsling and Swedish gässling.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Goslingname
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A surname.
goslingnoun/ˈɡɒzlɪŋ/
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A young goose.
- Marta's gander was a magnificent snow-white bird: the object of terror to foxes, children and dogs. She had reared him as a gosling; and whenever he approached, he would let fly a low contented burble and sidle his neck around her thighs.
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An inexperienced and immature, or foolish and naive, young person.
- Two stout woodmen with difficulty cut down this tree, the chips of which flew far and wide about the hall; but at my command my two green goslings carried away the fragments without any difficulty.
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datedA catkin on willows, nut trees, and pines.
- These Aments (we must no longer call them catkins) are composed both of male and female flowers; what Henry calls goslings in spring are the Aments of the willow tree ; his green goslings are female Aments , and , when mature , have the appearance of little tufts of wool, which appearance is caused by the downy material that crowns their feeds;
- When the oak puts on his goslings grey 'Tis time to sow barley night or day.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。