goatsucker means Any bird in the nightjar family Caprimulgidae. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why this word is great
GOATSUCKER — [Noun] A common name for any bird of the family Caprimulgidae, derived from the ancient, erroneous belief that it drank milk from goats at night. From the English words 'goat' and 'sucker', a calque of the Latin 'caprimulgus' (from 'caper', meaning "goat", and 'mulgeo', meaning "to milk" or "to suck"). Unlike the zoologically neutral "nightjar" or the onomatopoeically specific "whip-poor-will", "goatsucker" is an archaic title steeped in pastoral dread. It evokes the bird’s phantom life: a dusk silhouette dissolving into bark at dawn; an unsettling churr seeping from a twilight hedgerow; a farmer’s lantern casting a guilty shadow across a restless udder. The word is a fossil of human misapprehension, a testament to our habit of stitching sinister stories from the simple fabric of the dark.
noun
- Any bird in the nightjar family Caprimulgidae.“[…] ah, that was the woodcock - and the goatsucker - yes, yes! it sounds strange to him, that hasn't heard him […]”