Noun: magpie
| Singular | magpie |
| Plural | magpies |
Sample Sentences
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Not only is Mr. Booker a voracious magpie (who does not always acknowledge the sources of his ideas), but he also turns out to be an annoyingly biased and didactic one. [2005 April 15, Michiko Kakutani, “The Plot Thins, or Are No Stories New?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:]
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Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I met those accursed “magpie” Jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and, moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. Wessington everything. [1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom Rickshaw”, in The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales, Allahabad: A.H. Wheeler and Co., page 12:]
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The worst part of my experience in this magpie livery was yet to come, for I was to appear in it the next day at church. [1889, Henry White, The Record of My Life: An Autobiography, Cheltenham: Henry White, page 60:]
Nouns inflected like magpie
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Mag, a nickname for Margaret that was used to denote a chatterer, + archaic pie (“magpie”), from Middle English pie, pye, from Old French pie, from Latin pīca, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- (“woodpecker, magpie”). Displaced native Old English agu (“magpie”) and Middle English aguster (“magpie”), whence English haggister. See: Middle English Nouns '
pie', Latin Nouns '
pīca'.