birdsnest

From bird +‎ -s- +‎ nest.

birdsnest (plural birdsnests)

1. Alternative form of bird's nest.
   • 1865 May, “Farming for Boys. IV.”, in J[ohn] T[ownsend] Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton [pseudonym; Mary Abigail Dodge], Lucy Larcom, editors, Our Young Folks. An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls., volume I, number V, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, […], page 332:

     It begins, as some one has beautifully said, “with a mother’s look,—with a father’s smile of approbation, or sign of reproof,—with a sister’s gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother’s noble act of forbearance,—with handfuls of flowers in green and daisied meadow,—with birdsnests admired, but not touched,—with creeping ants, and almost imperceptible emmets,—with humming bees,—with pleasant walks and shady lands,—and with thoughts directed in sweet and kindly tones and words, to incite to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, end to the source of all virtue, to God himself.”

   • 1939, Irene Baird, Waste Heritage, Toronto, Ont.: Macmillan of Canada, published 1974, →ISBN, page 19:

     A fat woman in a birdsnest hat and white canvas shoes run over at the heels and clutching a white imitation leather handbag, strained forward behind the officer.

   • 1940, Wyndham Lewis, America, I Presume, Howell, Soskin & Co., page 240:

     In these was a blaze of athletic flesh; I found beneath me two pairs of dazzlingly naked young gentlemen, with the bulging breasts with birdsnests in the middle, and bulbous calves, obtained by those who muscle round after balls, and bright red shoulders (the reward of redhot sunbaths), that heaved and undulated in the arc-lit court.

   • 1973, Merton M. Sealts, Jr., editor, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, volumes X (1847–1848), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pages 334 and 427:

     At Cambridge King Henry’s crown was full of birdsnests.¹⁷⁴ […] At ⟨Oxford⟩ K[ing] Henry’s crown was full of birdsnests.²⁰

     ¹⁷⁴ This sentence is transcribed from Notebook England and Paris, p. [40] below. […] ²⁰ This sentence, struck through in pencil with a diagonal use mark, is transcribed in Journal LM, p. [98] above.

   • 2009, Brian Preston, Me, Chi, and Bruce Lee: Adventures in Martial Arts from the Shaolin Temple to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Berkeley, Calif.: Blue Snake Books, →ISBN, page 37:

     […] I shrank from any sport where I’d be expected to strip down afterward and shower, especially shower with macho manly wrestling-type guys from the older grades with birdsnests of curls above their drooping hoses, […]