Word.ws English Dictionary

butcherbird

butcherbird noun: any of the magpie-like birds in the genus Cracticus, of Australia and New Guinea.

butcherbird: any of the magpie-like birds in the genus Cracticus, of Australia and New Guinea
Image: Tatiana Gerus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

butcherbird (plural butcherbirds)

  1. Any of the magpie-like birds in the genus Cracticus, of Australia and New Guinea.
    • A butcher bird has stirred, tuned its flute with a few preparatory notes.1934, Henry G. Lamond, An Aviary On The Plains, page 47
    • A short way off, two male butcher birds, black and white like magpies, were calling antiphonally across a ravine.1987, Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Vintage, published 1998, page 224
  2. Any of the shrikes in the genus Lanius.
    1. (South Africa) The fiscal shrike, Lanius collaris.

Synonyms of butcherbird

Forms of butcherbird

pluralbutcherbirds

Origin of butcherbird

From butcher + bird, from its habit of hanging its prey.

Words formed from butcherbird

Questions about butcherbird

What does butcherbird mean?
Butcherbird means any of the magpie-like birds in the genus Cracticus, of Australia and New Guinea.
What part of speech is butcherbird?
Butcherbird is a noun.
What is the plural of butcherbird?
The plural of butcherbird is butcherbirds.

Words near butcherbird in the dictionary

  1. butcher's shop
  2. butcher's steak
  3. butcher's stripes
  4. butcher's thumb
  5. butcher's wart
  6. butcherbird
  7. butcherbirds
  8. butcherblock
  9. butcherblocks
  10. butcherdom
  11. butchered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butcherbird (page history and authors). 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.

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