Adélie penguin

noun

Adé·​lie penguin ə-ˈdā-lē- 

: a small antarctic penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae)

called also Adélie

Illustration of Adélie penguin

Examples of Adélie penguin in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

David Attenborough narrates this visual journey through the Arctic and the Antarctic with intimate looks at exotic species, including Adelie penguins, Arctic wolves, albatrosses, and polar bears. —Chris Snellgrove, EW.com, 23 Jan. 2024

Levick was horrified to witness not just male penguins mating with other males but one young male Adelie penguin attempting to copulate with a dead female. —Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 5 June 2023

Colonies of Adelie penguins on islands near the U.S. Palmer Station on the central WAP declined by 90% since the mid-1970′s. —Dr. James McClintock, al, 26 Jan. 2023

For the past 11 years, scientist and educator Jean Pennycook has invited members of the k-12 community to join her in the project, funded by the National Science Foundation, about Adelie penguins at the Cape Royds Adelie penguin colony in Antarctica. —Alycia Crall, Discover Magazine, 27 Jan. 2017

One of the three brushtail penguin species that lives on the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) that will surely suffer is the sea-ice dependent Adelie penguin. —Dr. James McClintock, al, 26 Jan. 2023

Almost the entire cohort of chicks from an Adelie penguin colony in the eastern Antarctic was wiped out by starvation in 2017. —Katrina Lau, NBC News, 12 Nov. 2021

Word History

Etymology

from Adélie Land, Antarctica

Note: The claim that the bird was named for the wife of the explorer Jules Dumont-d'Urville seems to be specious. In January, 1840, the stretch of Antarctic coast reached by Astrolabe and Zélée, the ships commanded by Dumont-d'Urville, was named Terre Adélie (Adélie Land) after the explorer's wife (née Adèle-Dorothée Pépin). The first published description of the penguin species was by two members of Dumont's expedition, Jacques Bernard Hombron and Honoré Jacquinot, in Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 2. série, tome 16-Zoologie (1841), p. 320. The penguin is named "Gorfou d'Adélie (Catarrhactes Adeliæ)" and after its description follows simply the notation "Habite les glaces de la terre Adélie" ("[it] inhabits the ice sheets of Adélie Land").

First Known Use

1901, in the meaning defined above