Just for interest, here is today's Dictionary.com Word of the Day (a free
service to which I subscribe):
Word of the Day for Thursday, June 1, 2006
stormy petrel \STOR-mee-PET-ruhl\, noun:
1. Any of various small sea birds of the family Hydrobatidae, having dark
plumage with paler underparts; also called storm petrel.
2. One who brings discord or strife, or appears at the onset of trouble.
But far from a 'pet' of the Communist regime, Gorky, the "stormy petrel of
the revolution," also condemned the revolution early on as a "cruel
experiment" with the Russian people "doomed to failure."
-- Valentina Kolesnikova, "Maxim Gorky: Hostage of the Revolution", Russian
Life, June 1, 1996
Of the unpredictable and constantly angry Paracelsus, for example, the
stormy petrel who convulsed the staid medical establishment of the sixteenth
century by demanding radical reforms in clinical thinking, he wrote: "This
first great revolt against the slavish authority of the schools had little
immediate effect, largely on account of the personal vagaries of the
reformer--but it made men think."
-- Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Saint", New Republic <http://www.tnr.com/> ,
December 13, 1999
Lenin, the stormy petrel of the Social Democratic party, was facing more
serious opposition than ever.
-- Michael Pearson, "Lenin's lieutenant", Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/> , September 29, 2001
. . .restless and indomitable, scouring like a stormy petrel the angry ocean
of debate.
-- Lytton Strachey, Eminent
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679640126/ref=nosim/lexico>
Victorians
_____
Stormy petrel is an alteration of earlier pitteral, probably so named in
allusion to St. Peter's walking on the sea, from the fact that the bird
flies close to the water in order to feed on surface-swimming organisms and
ship's refuse; called stormy because in a storm the birds surround a ship to
catch small organisms which rise to the surface of the rough seas; when the
storm ceases they are no longer seen.
Dictionary.com
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=10&q=stormy%20petrel> Entry and
Pronunciation for stormy petrel
Richard NOWOTNY
Port Melbourne, Victoria
M: 0438 224456
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