Word.ws English Dictionary

bunting

/ˈbʌntɪŋ/

bunting noun: strips of material used as festive decoration, especially in the colours of the national flag. Also the present participle and gerund of bunt.

bunting: strips of material used as festive decoration, especially in the colours of the national flag
Image: North Devon Council, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

bunting (countable and uncountable, plural buntings)

  1. Strips of material used as festive decoration, especially in the colours of the national flag.
  2. A thin cloth of woven wool from which flags are made; it is light enough to spread in a gentle wind but resistant to fraying in a strong wind.
  3. Flags considered as a group.

Noun (2)

bunting (plural buntings)

  1. Any of various songbirds of the genus Emberiza, having short bills and brown or gray plumage.

Noun (3)

bunting (plural buntings)

  1. A warm, often hooded infant garment, as outerwear or sleepwear, similar to a sleeper or sleepsack; especially as baby bunting or bunting bag.

Noun (4)

bunting (countable and uncountable, plural buntings)

  1. A pushing action.
  2. A strong timber; a stout prop.
  3. (obsolete) An old boys' game, played with sticks and a small piece of wood.

Proper noun capitalized: Bunting

Bunting (plural Buntings)

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname.

Also used as

bunting is also the present participle and gerund of bunt.

bunting meaning in Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Punjabi

bunting in Bengali

বান্টিং

bunting in Telugu

బంటింగ్

bunting in Kannada

ಬಂಟಿಂಗ್

bunting in Punjabi

ਬੰਟਿੰਗ
More languagesFewer languages
bunting in Odia
ବଣ୍ଟିଙ୍ଗ୍
bunting in Nepali
बन्टिङ
bunting in Malay
gegantung, pepanji

Examples of bunting in a sentence

  • My favourite snow bunting song is the clearance song they make to land.
  • Soon the snow buntings will arrive, bringing song.
  • Bunting was very fond of these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of elegance and refinement.

All 10 example sentences with bunting

Forms of bunting

Noun
pluralbuntings
Proper noun
pluralBuntings

Plural of bunting: buntings

Origin of bunting

Possibly from dialect bunting (“sifting flour”), from Middle English bonten (“to sift”), hence the material used for that purpose. Possibly from Germanic bundt (“to bind or tie together”).

From Middle English bunting, bountyng, buntynge (also as Middle English buntyle), of uncertain origin. Possibly a reference to speckled plumage, from an unrecorded Middle English *bunt (“spotted, speckled, pied”) akin to Dutch bont, Middle Low German bunt, bont, German bunt (“multi-coloured”) + -ing.

1922, apparently from Scots buntin (“plump, short and thick (esp. of children)”), itself an old term of endearment for children (1660s); the sense “plump” dates to the 1500s, and may be related to bunt (“belly of a sail”). Possibly related to butt (“(both noun and verb sense: buttocks; strike with head)”) or to bunny (“rabbit”). Compare with the nursery rhyme Bye, baby Bunting (1731), either of same origin or influenced this sense.

Words formed from bunting

Phrases with bunting

Words that rhyme with bunting

Questions about bunting

What does bunting mean?
Bunting means strips of material used as festive decoration, especially in the colours of the national flag.
What is bunting in Bengali?
Bunting in Bengali is বান্টিং. See Bunting meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is bunting?
Bunting can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bunting?
Bunting is pronounced /ˈbʌntɪŋ/ (UK).
What is the plural of bunting?
The plural of bunting is buntings.

Words near bunting in the dictionary

  1. bunters
  2. Buntes
  3. Buntești
  4. Buntin
  5. buntine
  6. bunting
  7. Buntingford
  8. buntingi
  9. buntingless
  10. buntings
  11. Buntins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bunting (page history and authors); Bunting (page history and authors); bunting (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bunting (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bunting (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bunting (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bunting (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bunting (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bunting.wav.

Cite this entry: “bunting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bunting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.