ganderling
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: ganderlings
Etymology: From gander + -ling, after gosling.
Senses: examples: text: Can any of our readers give this correspondent the name applied to a young gander? Some one has suggested that, since a young goose is a gosling (goose-ling) a young gander should be a ganderling.
ref: [1911, The Canadian Teacher, volume XVI, Toronto, Ont.: Educational Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 733, column 2:
text: Last spring Si found a goose egg twice as big as the regulation goose egg and he put it under the Mrs. Goose when she was ready to set. The result was just as Si had expected, for when the month was up and Si raised up one section of Mrs. Goose to take a peep underneath her he saw two of the finest ganderlings that he had ever had the pleasure of setting before his eyes.
ref: 1921 October 28, O. U. Squash [pseudonym], editor, “Pumpkin Hill News: Si Is No Goose”, in Washington Citizen, volume XVII, number 19, Washington, Mo., →OCLC, page 8, column 4:
text: Joseph Stelmach, still another Daytonian, is represented by two lithographs, Korean in inspiration: “Child With Basket” and “Ganderlings.”
ref: 1959 August 16, Frederick Yeiser, “In Art Circles: Abstractionism—Is It Trash?”, in The Cincinnati Enquirer, 119th year, number 129, Cincinnati, Oh., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6-D, column 8:
text: From all the various and fanciful stories we’ve heard over the years on sexing ducklings and goslings, the only certain information we’ve obtained is that Pilgrim geese can be color-sexed from the day they hatch. In this breed, the down of the ganderling is yellow while the young female is greyish.
ref: 1978, Rick Luttmann, Gail Luttmann, “Sexing”, in Ducks & Geese in Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, →ISBN, chapter 11 (Bringing Up Ducklings and Goslings), page 193:
text: What's got me bothered is that I have the opposite situation -- 3 hatched and survived (well, this long, going on 2 months for the oldest), but I've got one goose and 2 ganderlings.
ref: 2011 July 5, Denninmi, “How many female geese should you have per gander?”, in BackYard Chickens, archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025, post #4:
text: gosling: Generically, the young of geese, up to one year of age. If it is necessary to distinguish gender at this stage, I suppose you could use “ganderling” for the male and “gosling” for the female, though such usage is not supported by any dictionary I know of.
ref: [2011 October 7, Harvey Ussery, “Glossary”, in The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers, White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing, →ISBN, page 367, column 1:
text: Each offered a silent cacophony of resentments, strung like lead fishing weights during Lent, neither above or below each other, harnessed together, one giant thunder-thigh, a formidable but useless pair of ganderlings, not unlike those mentioned by the prophets at a guess-your-weight kiosk at high mass.
ref: 2016 June 6, Jeff Switt, “Descriptive Words That Don’t Typically Go Together” (comment), in Ann Linquist, Ann Linquist Writes, archived from the original on 09 Dec 2022, comment:
text: I purchased this to show her [my daughter] and my grandchildren places similar to where I grew up and some of the gentle ways one could feel about a turkey... like we felt about Gozzy Ganderling Whitefeathers, the gosling she brought home.
ref: 2017 February 1, Jane, “A DELIGHTFUL OBSERVATION OF NATURE”, in Amazon (review of Nature: My Life as a Turkey), archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025:
text: Egyptian ganderling / 10 months old / 🤍
ref: 2022 March 29, Wing & A Prayer Farm, Facebook, archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025:
text: I have a craigslist brown gander that is supposed to be from the hatchery, and a craigslist heritage unknown brown African goose with a white chest (pictured in a previous crossbreed thread.) They had 5 ganderlings and 1 girl.
ref: 2023 February 4, telandra2, “Brown Chinese X White Chinese Goslings?”, in BackYard Chickens, archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025, post #5:
ref: 2023 June 14, Yitzhak Grossman, “Is What's Good For the Ganderling Good For the Gosling?”, in Reading Responsa (podcast), via Torahcasts, archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025, episode 114
glosses: A young gander (male goose).