aerie

noun ae·rie \ ˈer-ē , ˈir- , ˈā-(ə-)rē \

variants: or less commonly aery

|Updated on: 29 May 2018

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of aerie

1 : the nest of a bird on a cliff or a mountaintop

2 obsolete : a brood of birds of prey

3 : an elevated often secluded dwelling, structure, or position

See aerie defined for English-language learners

See aerie defined for kids

aerie was our Word of the Day on 01/31/2014. Hear the podcast!

Recent Examples of aerie from the Web

But there’s no room inside Aon for an elevator leading to the aerie, so 601W charged Chicago architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz with putting one on the outside.

— blair kamin, chicagotribune.com, "Aon Center makeover treats big banal skyscraper with respect. But about that thrill ride ...," 14 May 2018
The 14th-floor aerie was ringed by wide windows and looked out on a clear but chilly day.

— steven levy, WIRED, "Cracking the Crypto War," 25 Apr. 2018
His aerie totals 10,923 square feet, with six bedrooms and six bathrooms, according to an offering plan for the project.

— katherine clarke, WSJ, "Inside Michael Dell’s Sprawling Property Empire," 22 Mar. 2018
SUBSCRIBE NOW Breeding peregrines return to the same nesting sites, or aeries, on rocky ledges each year.

— bruce henderson, charlotteobserver, "Feisty and territorial falcons fly back to NC mountains. Climbers are getting credit.," 15 Feb. 2018
This 4,019-square-foot aerie, which is 822 feet up the 96-story, 1,396-foot-tall building, has three bedrooms and four and a half baths.

— vivian marino, New York Times, "Estée Lauder Chairman Buys $23.5 Million Co-op," 29 Sep. 2017
In his spacious aerie in Hearst’s Midtown Manhattan tower, Mr. Carey displays trinkets of an earlier, more glamorous magazine age.

— sydney ember and michael m. grynbaum, New York Times, "The Not-So-Glossy Future of Magazines," 23 Sep. 2017
This impressive penthouse aerie is hogged by five emergency generators.

— eleanor cummins, Slate Magazine, "Museums Are Just About the Only Places Ready for the Next Natural Disaster," 27 Oct. 2017
Scholars have documented how Oñate oversaw atrocities that included the killing of 800 people in Acoma Pueblo, an ancient adobe aerie atop a 357-foot-tall sandstone mesa where the Acoma people still live today.

— simon romero, New York Times, "Statue’s Stolen Foot Reflects Divisions Over Symbols of Conquest," 30 Sep. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'aerie.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

English poet John Milton put a variant of "aerie" to good use in Paradise Lost (1667), writing "...there the eagle and the stork / On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build." But Milton wasn't the first to use the term, which comes to us via Medieval Latin and Old French and probably traces to an earlier Latin word for "nest" or "lair." English speakers had been employing "aerie" as a word for "bird's nest" for more than a century when Milton penned those words. Eventually, "aerie" was applied to human dwellings as well as birds' nests. At first, this sense referred to dwellings nestled high up in mountains or hills. These days, you're also likely to hear high-rise city apartments or offices referred to as "aeries."

Origin and Etymology of aerie

borrowed from Medieval Latin airea, aira, eria, Latinization of Old French aire, ere "bird's nest on a rock, family, stock, sort, kind," probably going back to Vulgar Latin *agrum, re-formation of Latin ager "field" — more at acre

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: circa 1520

in the meaning defined at sense 1

See Words from the same year

Other Birds Terms

bunting, clutch, covey, hackle, ratite, rictus, ruff, skein, zygodactyl

AERIE Defined for English Language Learners

aerie

noun

Definition of aerie for English Language Learners

: the nest of a bird (such as an eagle or hawk) built high up on a cliff or on the top of a mountain
: a room or building built high up so that people inside can see things happening below them