Merle
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The Eurasian blackbird, Turdus merula.
- 2 A type of mottled coloration on dogs. countable, uncountable
- 3 common black European thrush wordnet
- 4 Any blackbird.
- 5 A dog having this coloration. countable, uncountable
- 1 A surname from French of French origin.
- 2 A female given name from English.
"Her name was Merle, and to her name she always said she owed the fact that Gilbert Vanborough ever looked at her."
- 3 A male given name transferred from the surname.
"Merle Haggard is a name out of a morality play. And that's the kind of songs he sings."
Example
More examples"Merle Haggard is a name out of a morality play. And that's the kind of songs he sings."
Etymology
From Middle English merle, from Old French merle (French merle), from Latin merula (“blackbird”) (whence the directly borrowed Middle English merule, and compare the taxonomic name Turdus merula), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂mes- (“black, blackbird”). Compare Breton moualch (“ouzel”), Welsh mwyalch (“blackbird, thrush”). Distantly related to the synonymous ouzel.
From French Merle.
English 19th-century bird name from merle (“blackbird”), possibly also a variant of Muriel, Merrill, etc.
Related phrases
More for "merle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.