echidna

Other forms of echidna

plural

echidnae

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about echidna

What does echidna mean?

echidna means "a burrowing monotreme mammal covered with spines and having a long snout and claws for hunting ants and termites; native to New Guinea". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in echidna?

echidna has 3 syllables: e-chid-na. The stress falls on "chid". In IPA it is /ɪˈkɪdnə/.

What is another word for echidna?

Close synonyms include spiny anteater, anteater, spiny anteater, anteater. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is echidna a common word?

echidna is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.