Word.ws English Dictionary

cat-bird

cat-bird is the alternative form of catbird.

Meaning of catbird

Noun

catbird (plural catbirds)

  1. An American passerine bird of the genera Dumetella and Melanoptila.
    • The catbird’s note exactly resembles the voice of a kitten, that a stranger to it would instantly conclude that such an animal "had got bewildered in the branches".1832, Sharon Turner, The Sacred History of the World
  2. Any of four species of Australasian bowerbirds of the genera Ailuroedus and Scenopoeetes.
    • The cat bird had a forlorn cry, like a whimpering child or the animal it is named for.1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 185
  3. A babbler-like bird from eastern Africa, Parophasma galinieri.

Forms of cat-bird

pluralcat-birds

Questions about cat-bird

What is cat-bird the alternative form of?
Cat-bird is the alternative form of catbird.

Words near cat-bird in the dictionary

  1. cat-and-moused
  2. cat-and-mouses
  3. cat-and-mousing
  4. cat-bath
  5. cat-baths
  6. cat-bird
  7. cat-block
  8. cat-blocks
  9. cat-burglar
  10. cat-burglared
  11. cat-burglaring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cat-bird (page history and authors); catbird (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: “cat-bird.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cat-bird. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.