Wiktionary

hummingbird

See also: humming-bird and humming bird

English edit

 
Rufous hummingbird (one species of hummingbird)
 
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Etymology edit

From humming (noun) +‎ bird, in reference to the humming sound made by the rapidly moving wings.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

hummingbird (plural hummingbirds)

  1. Any of various small American birds in the family Trochilidae that have the ability to hover.
    Hyponym: carib
    • 1857 Thoreau, Henry David, journal entry, May 29, 1857. From Thoreau on Birds: notes on New England birds from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, p238. (Originally published as the anthology Thoreau's bird-lore, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910, edited by Francis H. Allen.)
      Soon I hear the low all-pervading hum of an approaching hummingbird circling above the rock, [...]
    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
      Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light.

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