altostratus
a gray and smooth, sometimes striated or fibrous (string-like) uniform veil of grayish or bluish cloud through which the sun may palely shine (as if through frosted glass).
altocumulus
cloud mass of various shapes, disconnected lumps or patches or a jumble of billowing cloudlets white or gray or both; sometimes lining up in parallel bands; sometimes with “towers,” resembling cumulus.
nimbostratus
an amorphous gray or dark cloud layer, blotting out the sun and often unseen because rain or snow is falling from it; sometimes with ragged clouds below.
(HIGH-ELEVATION CLOUDS)
cirrus
delicate white wisps or filaments of cloud sometimes with a silky look; or like fibrous threads with hooks at the end; often seem to converge at a point on the horizon.
cirrostratus
a thin, smooth, fibrous whitish cloud with which one often sees a halo effect around (but not obscuring) the sun; contourless and transparent, with no shadows cast on the ground.
cirrocumulus
a thin white layer of cloud, with no shading and with a ripple or other regular pattern; usually too thin to cause shadows below; often known as “mackerel clouds” or “mackerel sky.”
ANIMALS
Animals
The brown, or grizzly, bear (Ursus arctos) has a massive head and a concave facial profile. Its high shoulders produce a sloping back, emphasizing the animal’s robust build. The polar bear has a more aristocratic profile—a long neck tapering to a smaller, V-shaped head. It carries itself low to the ground, out of the wind and out of sight.
JAMES SHREEVE,
Nature: The Other Earthlings
In the Sunderbans, the tiger’s favorite prey is the chital. This is a beautiful, gracefully proportioned deer, reddish brown in color, with one black stripe along its spine. Each white spot on its flanks is swept backward, hazy on the edges, giving the impression that the animal is speeding away even when it stands quite still.
JAMES SHREEVE,
Nature: The Other Earthlings
In fact the koala is not a bear at all, but merely suggests one—a bear divested of danger, smaller, cuter, altogether a more predictable fellow. It has the slanted, beady eyes of a fearsome martinet, but they are rendered comical by bushy ears sprouting up like two enormous cowlicks. The koala’s mouth is a tight and stubborn slit, but its severity is wholly undone by what appears to be a black rubber nose. The com plete effect suggests an attempt at an authoritative demeanor that has turned out rather less than one had hoped—a dour schoolteacher proceeding through the geography lesson, unaware that his toupee is all askew.
JAMES SHREEVE,
Nature: The Other Earthlings
Species Adjectives (Relating to or Looking Like)
alligator
loricate
ant
formic
anteater
vermilingual
ape
australopithecine, anthropoid
ass
asinine
baboon
cynocephalous
badger
meline
barracuda
sphyraenoid
bat
vespertilin
bear
ursine, arctoid
beaver
casteroid
bee
apian
beetle
coleopterous, coleopteral
Among the tenants of the eucaplytus [s
ic
] trees are the marsupial gliders. These shy creatures are primarily nocturnal in their habits, and their moist, protuberant eyes gives [
sic
] them a characteristically wistful expression.
JAMES SHREEVE,
Nature: The Other Earthlings
The herring gulls come first, to the biggest island, where the lighthouse stands.... Among them are two or three pairs of great black-backed gulls, massive, hoarse-voiced and vulturine.
GAVIN MAXWELL,
Ring of Bright Water
The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,—the Ouzel or Water Thrush
(Cinclus Mexicanus,
Sw.). He is a singularly joyous and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail.
JOHN MUIR,
The Mountains of California
Just as surprised as I, he stood up. He must have construed the sounds of my advance to be those of another sheep or goat. His horns had made a complete curl and then some; they were thick, massive and bunched together like a high Roman helmet, and he himself was muscly and military, with a grave-looking nose. A squared-off, middle-aged, tro- phy-type ram, full of imposing professionalism, he was at the stage of life when rams sometimes stop herding and live as rogues.
EDWARD HOAGLAND,
Walking the Dead Diamond River
bird
avian, avine, volucrine
bison
bisontine, bisonic
buffalo
buteonine
bull
bovine, taurine
butterfly
lepidopteral, lepidopteran, lepidopterous, papilionaceous,
pierid, rhopalocerous
buzzard
buteonine
calf
vituline
camel
cameline
cat
feline, feliform
catfish
silurid, siluroid
centipede
myriapodous, myriapodan
chameleon
vermilingual
chipmunk
spermophiline
cobra
cobriform
cod
gadoid
cow
vaccine
crab
carcinomorphic, arthropodous, arthropodal
It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on a tripod of two froglike legs and a long thick tail, and its fore limbs, which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog’s do, carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of the creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a phosphorescent grey. And it stood there blinded by the light.
H. G. WELLS, “In the Abyss”
It was the head of a veritable sea monster, so huge and so hideous that, if the Old Man of the Sea himself had come up, he could not have made such an impression on us. The head was broad and flat like a frog‘s, with two small eyes right at the sides, and a toadlike jaw which was four or five feet wide and had long fringes drooping from the corners of the mouth. Behind the head was an enormous body ending in a long thin tail with a pointed tail fin which stood straight up and showed that this sea monster was not any kind of whale. The body looked brownish under the water, but both head and body were thickly covered with small white spots.
THOR HEYERDAHL,
Kon-Tiki
crane
grallatory
cricket
grillid, grilline
crocodile
loricate, crocodilian, emydosaurian
crow
corvine
cuckoo
cuculine
deer
cervine
dinosaur
dinosaurian, dinosauric
diving bird
urinatorial
dog
canine, cynoid
dolphin
delphin
dove (also, pigeon and dodo)
columbine
dragonfly
odonatous, libelluloid
duck
anatine
dugong
sirenian
eagle
aquiline
earthworm
lumbricoid
eel
anguilliform
The grizzly is set apart from other bears not only by its light-colored shaggy coat but by its high shoulder hump, formed by a mass of powerful muscles that drive the front legs. Its head is massive, its ears small and its forehead high—all of which combine to give its face a concave, or “dished,” profile.
PETER FARB,
The Land and the Wildlife of North America
Lo and behold, here in the creek was a silly-looking coot. It looked like a black and gray duck, but its head was smaller; its clunky white bill sloped straight from the curve of its skull like a cone from its base. I had read somewhere that coots were shy. They were liable to take umbrage at a footfall, skitter terrified along the water, and take to the air. But I wanted a good look. So when the coot tipped tail and dove, I raced towards it across the snow and hid behind a cedar trunk. As it popped up again its neck was as rigid and eyes as blank as a rubber duck’s in the bathtub.
ANNIE DILLARD,
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
When I lose interest in a given bird, I try to renew it by looking at the bird in either of two ways. I imagine neu- trinos passing through its feathers and into its heart and lungs, or I reverse its evolution and imagine it as a lizard. I see its scaled legs and that naked ring around a shiny eye; I shrink and deplume its feathers to lizard scales, unhorn its lipless mouth, and set it stalking dragonflies, cool-eyed, under a palmetto.
ANNIE DILLARD,
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
elephant
elephantine, pachydermoid, proboscidian
elk
alcine
falcon
falconine, falconoid
fish
ichthyoid, piscial, piscine
flamingo
phoenicopterous
flea
pulicid, pulicous
fly
muscid
fowl (chicken, turkeys, etc.)
gallinaceous, galline
fox
vulpine, vulpecular, alopecoid
frog
ranine, raniform, batrachian
giraffe
giraffine, camelopardine
goat
hircine, culiciform, capric, caprine
goose
anserine
gopher
spermophiline
gorilla
gorilloid, gorilline, gorillian
grasshopper (also, cricket)
orthopterous
gull
larine, laridine
Newts are the most common of salamanders. Their skin is a lighted green, like water in a sunlit pond, and rows of very bright red dots line their backs. They have gills as larvae; as they grow they turn a luminescent red, lose their gills, and walk out of the water to spend a few years padding around in damp places on the forest floor. Their feet look like fingered baby hands, and they walk in the same leg patterns as all four-footed creatures—dogs, mules, and, for that matter, lesser pandas.
ANNIE DILLARD,
Pilgrim
at
Tinker Creek
By then (March 1961) Chaka (a leopard cub) was two months old. He had a beautiful glossy coat and well-defined rosettes on his golden yellow body. His snow-white belly had distinct black spots. The black and white stripes on his coat were very clear, setting off to perfection his immaculate white chin.
VIVIAN J. WILSON,
Orphans of the Wild
His captor had been clearing grass for a new maize garden when he disturbed an adult serval. He found a single male kitten in a nest in the tall grass. It had a long, fluffy, soft coat—a pale sandy-brown color—very closely spotted over the dorsal surface. His eyes were open but he could not really see well. The little ears were already erect, very black, and with a dull, dirty-white crossbar.