Word.ws English Dictionary

deathbird

deathbird noun: tengmalm's owl (Nyctala tengmalmi).

Noun

deathbird (plural deathbirds)

  1. Tengmalm's owl (Nyctala tengmalmi)

Forms of deathbird

pluraldeathbirds

Origin of deathbird

From a superstition of some North American Indians that it presages death. Compare Salentino Sicilian oceddu de la morte (“owl”, literally “death bird”) and Malagasy vorondolo (“owl”, literally “ghost bird”).

Questions about deathbird

What does deathbird mean?
Deathbird means tengmalm's owl (Nyctala tengmalmi).
What part of speech is deathbird?
Deathbird is a noun.
What is the plural of deathbird?
The plural of deathbird is deathbirds.

Words near deathbird in the dictionary

  1. deathbed conversion
  2. deathbed conversions
  3. deathbeds
  4. deathbell
  5. deathbells
  6. deathbird
  7. deathbirds
  8. deathblow
  9. deathblows
  10. deathbook
  11. deathbooks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deathbird (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: “deathbird.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deathbird. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.