plover (third-person singular simple presentplovers,present participleplovering,simple past and past participleplovered)
To dote over, or, crowd or nestle with
1997, Barry MacSweeney,The Book of Demons, page107:
Invisible twine plying merchants are unravelling the long grasses and theplovering pull of the long windstrewngrasses pluck the prince in his chest his heart his passion and love as if no tomorrow.
2000, Stuart Jeffries,Mrs Slocombe's Pussy: Growing Up in Front of the Telly, page144:
I would blanch, I would quail and, maybe in that season, I would haveplovered —plovered my head deep into my feathers and plovered away on thin, wading bird's legs.
2002, Calvin Bedient,The Violence of the Morning: Poems, page42:
1769, John Poulter,The Discoveries of John Poulter, Alias Baxter, page 5:
Gentlemen often came fromDublin, and payed me for going into the Channel with them aplovering and fishing, and going aboard of Ships in the Bay; but once among the rest, some of these Chaps came to hire my Smack, to go into the Bay, which I let them have to my Sorrow;
1865, Henry Onderonk,Queens County in Olden Times, page87:
There is a handsome prospect from the plains, which render very good shooting in the season ofplovering.
1962,Diary and Autobiography of John Adam, page244:
Brisler went Yesterday aplovering with a Party who killed about an hundred.
To wade along the shore, examining the sand like a plover does.
1971, John Ciardi,Lives of X., page50:
Men with nothing to doplovered the sand - edge with clam rakes that raked nothing.
2021, Clive Chatters,Heathland:
Blathwyte indicates the scale of another population of waders through recording an annual crop of 250 Lapwing eggsVanellus vanellus being taken by 'plovering' gamekeepers.
