gyrfalconn.

Etymology: < Old French gerfaucon, also gerfauc (modern French gerfaut) = Provençal girfalc-s, Spanish gerifalte, Portuguese gerifalte, Italian girfalco, girifalco, medieval Latin gero-, giro-, gire-, gyrofalco, Middle High German gir-, gervalke (modern German gier-, geier-, gerfalke), Dutch giervalk, Old Norse geirfálki.A compound of the word which appears in English as falcon n.; the origin of the first element is disputed, but the prevailing view both among Germanic and Romanic philologists now is that, while the recorded forms in the Germanic languages are adopted < French, the ultimate source is the Old High German gîr vulture (Middle High German gîr, modern German geier), < the root *gῑr in Old High German giri, gîri greedy. The suggestion that the medieval Latin gyrofalco is derived < gȳrus, gȳrāre, and refers to the ‘circling’ movements of the bird in the air, was made by Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis) as early as 1188 ( Top. Hib. ed. Brewer, i. xiii). A treatise on hunting by the Emperor Frederic II (d. 1250) contains a passage ( ii. iv. 152, ed. 1596) in which the word is said to be either from the Greek κύριος, lord, or from the Greek ἱερός sacred. The latter suggestion was probably based on the current term falco sacer denoting a kind of hawk; but according to modern scholars sacer in this use (= French, Spanish, Portuguese sacre, noun) does not mean ‘sacred’, but is an adoption of the Arabic çaqr. In the 16th cent. hierofalco was adopted by ornithologists (Aldrovandus, Gesner) as the correct Latin form, probably from the observation that Italian ger- sometimes represents Latin hier- (as in gerarchia hierarchy); and it is still used as the scientific name of a sub-genus of the genus Falco. The view of some recent etymologists, that Old French gerfaucon represents a popular Latin *hierofalco, and that the first element of this is from Greek ἱέραξ hawk, is very improbable.