"widow bird" meaning in English

See widow bird in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: widow birds [plural], widowbird [alternative]
Etymology: Compound of widow + bird. The name for the family Viduidae derives from the genus name Vidua, from post-classical Latin vidua (“widow”) for males' black plumage, which resembles the mourning clothes of a widow. Compare whydah, from Whydah, a city in the Kingdom of Dahomey, now Ouidah, Benin. The terms widow-bird and whydah-bird influenced one another due to association of one species with the city. Etymology templates: {{glossary|Compound}} Compound, {{com+|en|widow|bird}} Compound of widow + bird, {{taxfmt|Viduidae|family}} Viduidae, {{taxfmt|Vidua|genus}} Vidua, {{der|en|la|vidua||widow}} Latin vidua (“widow”) Head templates: {{en-noun}} widow bird (plural widow birds)
  1. Any of several species of birds in the family Viduidae, incorporating whydahs and widow finches. Derived forms: long-tailed widowbird (alt: sakabula, Euplectes progne), red-collared widowbird Translations (birds of family Viduidae): wdówka [feminine] (Polish)
    Sense id: en-widow_bird-en-noun-jpLFdBbp Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Polish translations, Terms with Zulu translations, Perching birds, Weaverbirds Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 70 30 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 80 20 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 69 31 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 72 28 Disambiguation of Terms with Polish translations: 81 19 Disambiguation of Terms with Zulu translations: 75 25 Disambiguation of Perching birds: 78 22 Disambiguation of Weaverbirds: 84 16 Disambiguation of 'birds of family Viduidae': 89 11
  2. Any of several species of birds in the genus Euplectes. Translations (Euplectes sp.): sakabula (Zulu)
    Sense id: en-widow_bird-en-noun-rR6Wvx1B Disambiguation of 'Euplectes sp.': 29 71

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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          "_dis": "70 30",
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          "_dis1": "85 15",
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          "whydah",
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          "widow finch"
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          "_dis1": "89 11",
          "code": "pl",
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        }
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          "_dis1": "29 71",
          "code": "zu",
          "lang": "Zulu",
          "lang_code": "zu",
          "sense": "Euplectes sp.",
          "word": "sakabula"
        }
      ]
    }
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  "word": "widow bird"
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    },
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      "lang_code": "zu",
      "sense": "Euplectes sp.",
      "word": "sakabula"
    }
  ],
  "word": "widow bird"
}

Download raw JSONL data for widow bird meaning in English (2.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.