pullus

Unadapted borrowing from Latin pullus.

pullus (plural pulli)

1. (ornithology) A chick; a young bird in the downy stage.

• “pullus”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Unadapted borrowing from Latin pullus. Doublet of pul.

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pullus m (plural pulli)

1. (ornithology) A pullus; the young chick of a bird.

   Synonym: kuiken

   Hyponyms: nesteling, takkeling

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpul.lus/, [ˈpʊlːʲʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈpul.lus/, [ˈpulːus]

Disputed; two etymologies are plausible:

• From Proto-Italic *polnos, from Proto-Indo-European *polH-on- (“offspring, (animal) young”); compare Ancient Greek πῶλος (pôlos, “foal; young girl”), Proto-Germanic *fulô (“foal”), Albanian pjellë (“child”) and pelë (“mare”), Old Armenian ուլ (ul, “kid, fawn”). The verbal root is likely found in Albanian pjell (“to beget”), which implies a connection to pellō (“to drive, push”), from Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂- with a semantic shift of “to push (out)” > “to beget”,[1] if not a distinct root *pelH- (“to give birth”).[2]
• From Proto-Indo-European *put-, also found in Latin putus (“boy”), Proto-Indo-Iranian *putrás (“boy”) and perhaps Sanskrit पोत (pota, “young animal”) (which would indicate *pewt-), Lithuanian putýtis (“young bird, young animal”). De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *putslos, which he considers a variant of *putlos (“boy”). The presence of an earlier apical consonant in the stem in Latin is evidenced by the -s- in the diminutive adjective pusillus.[3] Some authors connect these to the root *peh₂w- (“small”) (compare Latin paulus, paullus (“small”) and paucus (“little, few”), Old English fēaw (“little, few”)), but the morphology is unclear and the complete disappearance of the laryngeal is hard to explain.

pullus m (genitive pullī); second declension

1. a young animal
   1. chick, chicken
   2. foal
2. (term of endearment) darling

Second-declension noun.

From derivations:

Unsorted:

Borrowings

Probably from Proto-Indo-European *polHwós (maybe a weak form of *pélHus) or *polHnós, from the root *pelH- (“pale, gray”), thereby related to palleō, though the formal details are debated.[1]

pullus (feminine pulla, neuter pullum); first/second-declension adjective

1. dark-colored, dark gray; dusky

First/second-declension adjective.

• “pullus, i, m.”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “pullus, a, um”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “pullus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• pullus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• pullus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “pullus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers