DCHP-1 Online

laughing goose [from its harsh call, resembling laughter]

• a grayish-brown goose, Anser albifrons, having a white face and a black-blotched breast and breeding in the Canadian Arctic.

  See also: white-fronted goose  

  • 1743  (1949)  Laug'hing geese are of the size of a weywey. . . .
  • 1833  (1963)  "Large flocks of the Laughing Goose have passed southward since dusk."
  • 1921  Then, after that, the sky soon becomes mottled with flying birds of many kinds: gray geese, laughing geese, waveys, and white geese, as well as great flocks of ducks of many kinds.
  • 1956  White-fronted goose [is also called] laughing goose (. . . Early use Edwards 1750. "N.W.T.," Man, Sask.). . . .