passerine

1. 1.

   perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless

   Synonymspasseriform bird

   Broaderbird

   Narroweroscinesparrowlyrebirdscrubbirdbroadbilltyrannidwren

   Part ofPasseriformes

1. 1.

   relating to or characteristic of the passeriform birds

   Antonymsnonpasserine

Other forms of passerine

plural

passerines·

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 passerine

What does passerine mean?

passerine means "perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in passerine?

passerine has 3 syllables: pas-se-rine. The stress falls on "pas".

What is another word for passerine?

Close synonyms include passeriform bird. 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.

What is the opposite of passerine?

The recorded antonyms are nonpasserine.

Is passerine a common word?

passerine 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.