Edit:
Together they can make the combined-arms-gulls.
If seagulls fly over the sea, then what flies over the bay?
Bagels.
Captain Planet Gull: “Give me those chips and I’ll poop on you!”
You: “… don’t you mean ‘or’ you will poop on me, not ‘and’?”
Captain Planet Gull: …
You: …
I never knew that. I thought it went from beagle to seagull and then on to eagle…
I’ve seen many seagulls in my life.
But I’ve never seen any of the others.
And that’s terrifying. Stay vigilant.
Wrong.
Seagulls imply the existence of Rivergulls, Lakegulls, Mountiangulls, Desertgulls, Forestgulls, Plaingulls, Valleygulls, Hillgulls, etc.
No no no, you’re all wrong. It goes Agles, Beagles, Seagulls, Deegles, Eagles, etc. We’ve proven the existence of 3 of these species already, but the search continues for these other mysterious creatures the certainly must exist. In this TED Talk, I will…
Archipelagulls
I think a “landgull” would just be a pigeon
Nah, that’s an airgull. A landgull would be a chicken.
Nah, that’s a farmgull. A landfill would be an ostrich
No that’s where garbage goes, landgull would be a peacock
No, that’d be a fancygull. A landgull would be a rat.
No that would be a politigul. A landgull would be a gopher.
In light of the above, then, I hereby propose that squirrels get renamed to “treegulls.”
Reminds me of a John Hodgman bit - we have ice hockey, field hockey, and air hockey, implying the existence of fire hockey.
It’s Called seagull
It flies
With that logic, firegull are penguins.
I used to study animal management and there was a lecturer who wrote his uni thesis on “seagulls” and any time he heard someone call them seagulls he’d shout down the hallway “They’re herring gulls!”
Seagulls are not just herring gulls though. The term is used for any gulls people see near the sea. In the UK that’s herring, great black backed & and lesser black backed, black headed, common, and kittiwakes.
If there are armadillos, where are the legadillos?
And what about the Dillos who don’t want to be armed?
unarmadillos?
I live in Colorado and there are gulls here, we are far from the sea.
You have to go pretty far back (to proto-Celtic, it looks like) to find a linguistic ancestor for the word “gull” that doesn’t just mean “that specific bird.”
But in proto-Celtic, it looks like “weilanna” probably meant “wailer.” As in, “one who wails,” though we don’t know exactly what the suffix “-anna” means. A similar word in that language would’ve been “wailos,” which even though it sounds similar seems to have been unrelated to our modern term “wolf,” as it comes from a different proto-indo-european root.
Anyway, the word “gull” does refer to the sounds that it makes more than anything else. So in figuring out what a landgull, airgull, and firegull might be, we need to find something noisy. Or just something annoying, given the derisive connotation of “wail.”
Edit: This is, of course, assuming that we’re looking for different existing types of animals to be these creatures, rather than just (for instance) creating new, elemental forms of gulls; or “reskinning” seagulls with different elements; or inventing all-new animals to fill those roles.
Wailos or wailer is wolf, is that because they “wail” (howl?) Or is that just a coincidence?
Sorry for being unclear–proto-Celtic calls wolves “wailos” for the same reason as they call gulls “weilanna,” because of the noise, yes. The coincidence is that the modern word “wolf” sounds like the proto-Celtic word “wailos.”
It’s probably the result of a taboo. It’s why people say “bear” (the brown one) or “medved” (the honey knower) instead of “arth” or “ursus”.
Interesting. I knew about “bear” but I did not know about “medved” as another minced-taboo. Thanks for that.
also, spacegulls
Space gul
Attention Bajoran workers…
