Albatrosses are highly philopatric, meaning they will usually return to their natal colony to breed. Albatrosses have evolved to breed on islands where land mammals are absent and have not developed defences against them.
Albatrosses rely on wind to travel and can not get airborne in a calm. See all examples of albatross. These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
Translations of albatross in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator? Translator tool. What is the pronunciation of albatross? Browse alate BETA. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! See synonyms for albatross on Thesaurus. Compare wandering albatross. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.
See word origin. Albatross is defined as guilt or a burden. The definition of an albatross is a sea bird characterized by their webbed feet, long and slender wings and their ability to remain in the air for a long time. A burden or source of distress, esp.
Any of several large web-footed birds constituting the family Diomedeidae, chiefly of the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere, and having a hooked beak and long narrow wings.
Because of their strong navigation capabilities, the sailors also associate these birds with good fortune and prosperity. In the Maori culture, the albatrosses were held in high esteem. When one of these birds died, no part of their body would ever go to waste; their meat was cooked as food, while the fat from their body was preserved to be used as cooking oil. The bones and feathers in their body were used in the ceremonial garb of the chief of their tribes.
In some of the Maori myths, it was also mentioned that there was an albatross who was a demi-God and the ancestor of their tribe. There is a famous Maori legend in which an albatross befriends a water monster and teaches him to fly. The story dates back to over a thousand years when there lived a water monster or a Taniwha on the harbor of Porirua, named Awarua. Awarua had a friend named Rereroa, who was an albatross. Every day he would watch Rereroa flying high in the sky and would wish he could do the same.
Then one day, Awarua asked Rereroa if he would teach him to fly as well. Although it was challenging at first, with the dedication of the two friends, Awarua eventually learned to fly just as well as Rererua. Many people believe that the top of the Mana flattened during the course of their flying attempts. The Albatrosses have a mixed symbolism in the Native American tribes. While some tribes consider them to be a symbol of perseverance, other tribes condemn them for their aggressiveness. Once, some men from a Native American tribe moved closer to the water bodies in order to observe the birds that inhabited these areas.
Two birds caught the attention of these men in particular; one of them was a Whiskey Jack, and the other was an Albatross. However, soon they noticed that while the albatrosses were beautiful, they were also loud and ill-tempered. On the other hand, the whiskey jacks were polite. When these men went fishing for themselves, they gave the fish liver to the birds to eat. While the whiskey jacks ate silently and left, the albatrosses fought with each other over the food and were often rude to the humans.
Not long after, they stopped feeding them and preferred the company of the little whiskey jacks. It is not every day that the free spirit of the albatross visits you in your dream, is it? So, what does it mean to dream of these sea birds? Are they a good or a bad omen?
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