hummingbird

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See also: humming-bird and humming bird

English[edit]

Rufous hummingbird (one species of hummingbird)
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Etymology[edit]

From humming (noun) +‎ bird, in reference to the humming sound made by the rapidly moving wings.

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Noun[edit]

hummingbird (plural hummingbirds)

  1. Any of various small American birds in the family Trochilidae that have the ability to hover.
    Hyponym: carib
    • 1857 Thoreau, Henry David, journal entry, May 29, 1857. From Thoreau on Birds: notes on New England birds from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, p238. (Originally published as the anthology Thoreau's bird-lore, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910, edited by Francis H. Allen.)
      Soon I hear the low all-pervading hum of an approaching hummingbird circling above the rock, [...]
    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
      Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light.

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