noun
- any of numerous long-legged, long-necked, usually long-billed birds of the family Ardeidae, including the true herons, egrets, night herons, and bitterns.
noun
noun
- any of various wading birds of the genera Butorides, Ardea, etc, having a long neck, slim body, and a plumage that is commonly grey or white: family Ardeidae, order Ciconiiformes
noun
- same as Hero
- Patrick. 1920–99, British abstract painter and art critic
c.1300, from Old French hairon (12c.), earlier hairo (11c., Modern French héron), from Frankish *haigiro or some other Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *hraigran- (cf. Old High German heigaro “heron,” German Reiher, Dutch reiger, Old Norse hegri), from PIE *qriq-, perhaps imitative of its cry (cf. Old Church Slavonic kriku “cry, scream,” Lithuanian kryksti “to shriek”). Old English cognate hraga did not survive into Middle English.