hawksbill

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun pugnacious tropical sea turtle with a hawk-like beak; source of food and the best tortoiseshell

From hawk + -s- + bill; so named because its sharp beak is reminiscent of a hawk's.

When they were captured, some hawksbills were still asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from other marine animals. — Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World, Jules Verne
It was composed of turtle soup made of the most delicate hawksbills, of a surmullet served with puff paste (the liver of which, prepared by itself, was most delicious), and fillets of the emperor-holocanthus, the savour of which seemed to me superior even to salmon. — Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Jules Verne

hawksbill turtle, hawkbill, tortoiseshell turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata

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