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A petrel is a . Many kinds are dark with white patches; they fly far over open ocean and often come to land only to nest. Storm petrels are the small ones that patter their feet on the water as they pick food from the surface — they look, just for a second, as if they are walking on it. Sailors have long stories about them. The name may come from Saint Peter, who walked on water in the Bible, though that is only a perhaps; some people think it copies the of those feet. Neither story is certain. Though actually, in English a petrel can also mean a person who seems to bring trouble, or who appears when trouble is coming. In class, treat petrel as the bird unless the sentence is clearly about a person. They are cousins of albatrosses, not of garden swallows, even if the Chinese name makes you think of swallows.
海燕（海鳥；不是院子裡的燕子）
組成From earlier English pitteral. It may be a small form of Peter, after the story of St Peter walking on the water; another idea is that it copies the pitter-patter of the bird’s feet. Neither origin is certain.
原始詞典資料1 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。
petrelnoun/ˈpɛt.ɹəl/
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Any of various species of black, grey, or white seabirds in the order Procellariiformes.
- The seventh of May following, we first saw many Birds in bignesse of Cliffe Pidgeons, and after divers other as Pettrels, Cootes, Hagbuts, Pengwins, Murres, Gannets, Cormorants, Guls, with many else in our English Tongue of no name.
- In a storm they will hover close under the ship's stern in the wake of the ship (as it is called) or the smoothness which the ship's passing has made on the sea; and there as they fly (gently then) they pat the water alternately with their feet as if they walked upon it; though still upon the wing. And from hence the seamen give them the name of petrels in allusion to St. Peter's walking upon the Lake of Gennesareth.
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。