yellowhammer
Meanings
noun
- A passerine bird, Emberiza citrinella, of western Eurasia, which is mainly yellow in colour.
- The northern flicker, Colaptes auratus, a woodpecker with yellow underwings and undertail and often other yellowish underparts; one of its ways of feeding is to hammer on trees to find insects (adults and larvae) to eat.
- A native or resident of the American state of Alabama.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
An alteration (influenced by hammer) of the earlier yelambre, yelamber, from Middle English *yelwambre, from yelwe (“yellow”) + *ambre (“yellowhammer”), from Old English amore, related to Old High German amaro (“yellowhammer”) (see modern German Ammer).
Synonyms
Related words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.