sparrow

CEFRB1

/ˈspæɹəʊ/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A small common bird with a short tail.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A member of the family Passeridae, comprising small Old World songbirds.

Examples

  • Not a single sparrow was to be heard.

  • The boy can't tell a swallow from a sparrow.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
4
Synonyms
3

Also pronounced

  • /ˈspæɹoʊ/
  • /ˈspaɹəw/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. The house sparrow, Passer domesticus; a small bird with a short bill, and brown, white and gray feathers.

  2. A member of the family Passerellidae (or Emberizidae, under classification systems that subsume the New World sparrows under Emberizidae), comprising small New World songbirds.

  3. Generically, any small, nondescript bird.

More examples

In context

  • cockney sparrow

  • In a poem by Sappho, Aphrodite is represented as riding in a car drawn by sparrows.

  • Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a sparrow, but by putting one leg forward first, and then the other.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

A tiny blank landed on the bird feeder and ate some seeds.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English sparwe, sparowe, from Old English spearwa, from Proto-West Germanic *sparwō, from Proto-Germanic *sparwô, from Proto-Indo-European *spḗr (“sparrow”). Cognate with Dutch spreeuw (“starling”), Alemannic German Spar (“sparrow”), German Sperling (“sparrow”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål spurv (“sparrow”), Norwegian Nynorsk sporv (“sparrow”), Swedish sparv (“sparrow”), Breton frao (“crow”), Tocharian A ṣpārāñ, Ancient Greek ψάρ (psár, “starling”), as well as Italian sparviero and Italian sparviere (“hawk”).