An archaic or dialectal term for a bittern, the large wading bird found in marshes, sometimes spelled as 'bitter' or 'bittern.'
From Old English and Middle English variants of 'bittern,' with the '-or' ending being an older spelling variation used before the modern '-ern' ending became standard.
Medieval spelling was remarkably flexible—the same word could be written five different ways depending on the scribe's preference, which is why tracking word evolution sometimes means recognizing completely different-looking spellings as the same word.
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