whirlybird

1. 1.

   an aircraft without wings that obtains its lift from the rotation of overhead blades

   Synonymshelicopterchoppereggbeater

   Broaderheavier-than-air craft

   Narrowercargo helicoptershuttle helicoptersingle-rotor helicopterskyhook

   Partsbladelanding skidrotor

Other forms of whirlybird

plural

whirlybirds·

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 whirlybird

What does whirlybird mean?

whirlybird means "an aircraft without wings that obtains its lift from the rotation of overhead blades".

How many syllables are in whirlybird?

whirlybird has 3 syllables: whir-ly-bird. The stress falls on "whir".

What is another word for whirlybird?

Close synonyms include helicopter, chopper, eggbeater. 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 whirlybird a common word?

whirlybird 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.