the.com/kiwi
a flightless bird, a fuzzy fruit, and a nation's nickname — all somehow the same word
means A word that refers to several distinct things: a small flightless bird native to New Zealand, the fuzzy brown-skinned green fruit (also called kiwifruit), and an informal nickname for a New Zealander.
from From te reo Māori 'kiwi,' the name for the bird — likely imitative of its shrill call. New Zealanders adopted it as a national emblem, and 'Kiwi' became their own nickname. The fruit, originally the Chinese gooseberry, was renamed 'kiwifruit' by New Zealand exporters in the mid-20th century, trading on the country's bird-borne identity to market it abroad.
- egg size
- lays eggs up to 20% of its body weight
- nostril nose
- only bird with nostrils at its beak tip
- fruit origin
- actually Chinese, rebranded by New Zealand marketers
- loose feathers
- plumage feels more like shaggy hair than feathers
- night shift
- nocturnal and nearly blind, hunting by smell
kiwifruit — green or gold berry native to china, now grown extensively in new zealand since the 1950s
kiwi bird — flightless nocturnal bird endemic to new zealand, national symbol, critically endangered with ~68,000 remaining