linnet

Scottish diminutive for the linnet (Linaria cannabina), a small finch whose melodious song made it a favourite caged bird. In Scots poetry and song, 'lintie' is a fond term of endearment for a sweet-voiced woman or child, as in Burns's 'bonnie wee lintie'. Now mainly literary and nostalgic in register.

Any bird of the family , seed-eating passerine birds, native chiefly to the Northern Hemisphere and usually having a conical beak.

Any bird within the genus (formerly a subset of the genus ), small passerine songbirds with yellow-green plumage, found throughout Europe and Asia.

(archaic, Scotland) A linnet.