sparrow

Meaning

Noun

• The house sparrow, Passer domesticus; a small bird with a short bill, and brown, white and gray feathers.
• A member of the family Passeridae, comprising small Old World songbirds.
• A member of the family Emberizidae, comprising small New World songbirds.
• Generically, any small, nondescript bird.
• A quick-witted, lively person. Often used in the phrase cockney sparrow.

Related

Similar words

• spadger, sparra, spoggy, spuggy

Origin

• From Middle English sparwe, sparowe, from Old English spearwa, from Proto-West Germanic *sparwō, from Proto-Germanic *sparwô, from Proto-Indo-European *spḗr ("sparrow").
• Cognate with Dutch spreeuw ("starling"), Alemannic German Spar ("sparrow"), German Sperling ("sparrow"), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål spurv ("sparrow"), Norwegian Nynorsk sporv ("sparrow"), Swedish sparv ("sparrow"), Breton frao ("crow"), Tocharian A spārāñ, Ancient Greek ψάρ ("starling").