Meaning
1 sensesAny bird of the order Passeriformes, which comprises more than half of all bird species.
More definitions
- perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless
Examples
1 sentencesGrackles are passerines.
Translations
4 languagesOrigin
Adjective sense 1 is borrowed from New Latin Passer (“bird genus”) (from Latin passer (“spAdjective sense 1 is borrowed from New Latin Passer (“bird genus”) (from Latin passer (“sparrow”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (“to spread out; to fly (in the sense of spreading out wings)”)) + English -ine (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: passerines| Singular | passerine |
|---|---|
| Plural | passerines |
regular
Synonyms
4 synonymsClose in meaning
- perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless:passeriform bird
Antonyms
1 antonymsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.