sparrow
/ˈspæɹoʊ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.48 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The house sparrow, Passer domesticus; a small bird with a short bill, and brown, white and gray feathers.
noun
A member of the family Passerellidae (or Emberizidae, under classification systems that subsume the New World sparrows under Emberizidae), comprising small New World songbirds.
noun
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a sparrow, but by putting one leg forward first, and then the other."
- "In a poem by Sappho, Aphrodite is represented as riding in a car drawn by sparrows."
- "cockney sparrow"
- "I take it there 's scarcely a happier fellow alive than your honest town-bred smoke-dried cockney sparrow."
- "Professional cockney sparrow Martine has acted since childhood."
Etymology
From Middle English sparewe, sparowe, sparu, sparwe, spearewe, sperrewe, from Old English spearwa, from Proto-West Germanic *sparwō, from Proto-Germanic *sparwô, from Proto-Indo-European *spḗr (“sparrow”). Cognates Cognate with Yola sparrowe (“sparrow”), North Frisian sparag, spåri (“sparrow”), Saterland Frisian Spräie (“sparrow”), Alemannic German and Luxembourgish Spatz (“sparrow”), Dutch spreeuw (“starling”), German Spatz, Sperling (“sparrow”), Vilamovian śpielik, śpjelik, śpjeliḱ (“sparrow”), Yiddish שפּערל (shperl, “sparrow”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål spurv (“sparrow”), Faroese spurvur (“sparrow”), Norwegian Nynorsk sporv (“sparrow”), Swedish sparv (“sparrow”), Gothic 𐍃𐍀𐌰𐍂𐍅𐌰 (sparwa, “sparrow”); also Latin parra (“bird of ill omen”), Ancient Greek ψάρ (psár), ψήρ (psḗr, “starling”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: sparewe, spearwa, *sparwō, *sparwô, *spḗr, Sparow
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈspæɹoʊ/
- British English: /ˈspæɹəʊ/
Usage
- British usage