A loud black-and-white bird with a very long tail, hopping about with its eye on whatever small thing is lying on the ground — and, people say, carrying the shiny ones home.

magpie 的畫面可以想成一隻黑白分明、尾巴很長的鳥。牠吵,走路一跳一跳,眼睛盯著地上的小東西。傳說牠看到亮晶晶的就想叼回巢裡。這個字後來的用法,可以想成分別抓住了這幅畫的兩個部分:一個是「什麼都撿回家」,一個是「黑白相間的樣子」。

From the word’s history

The name is Mag, an old nickname for Margaret used for a chatterer, joined to pie, the older English word for this bird, from Latin pica. The noisiness is built into the name.

這個名字是 Mag 加 pie。Mag 是 Margaret 的小名,以前拿來指很愛講話的人。pie 是這種鳥的舊名字,來自拉丁文 pica。所以「吵」這件事,本來就寫在名字裡;英文裡偶爾有人用 magpie 形容講個不停,走的就是這條線。

Wiktionary, "magpie"

登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。