fiddlehead

Other forms of fiddlehead

plural

fiddleheads·

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 fiddlehead

What does fiddlehead mean?

fiddlehead means "tall fern of northern temperate regions having graceful arched fronds and sporophylls resembling ostrich plumes". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in fiddlehead?

fiddlehead has 4 syllables: fidd-le-he-ad. The stress falls on "le".

What is another word for fiddlehead?

Close synonyms include ostrich fern, shuttlecock fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, Pteretis struthiopteris, Onoclea struthiopteris. 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 fiddlehead a common word?

fiddlehead is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.