A medium-sized bird with a distinctive harsh, rasping call that lives in cornfields and grasslands, known for its loud croaking sound that gives it its name.
Compound of corn + crake, from crake meaning 'to cry out' or 'to croak,' from Middle English cracken. The name is onomatopoetic from the bird's call.
The corncrake's call is so distinctive—a harsh 'crex-crex' sound—that it literally shaped its own name; medieval people just heard the noise and said 'that's a corn-crake,' proving onomatopoeia is nature's own vocabulary lesson!
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