Word.ws English Dictionary

grassquit

grassquit noun: any of several small tropical birds now placed in the tanager family Thraupidae (but previously in Emberizidae), common in the West Indies and in countries of Central and South America around the Caribbean Sea.

grassquit: any of several small tropical birds now placed in the tanager family Thraupidae (but previously in...
Image: DickDaniels, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

grassquit (plural grassquits)

  1. Any of several small tropical birds now placed in the tanager family Thraupidae (but previously in Emberizidae), common in the West Indies and in countries of Central and South America around the Caribbean Sea.
    • 1988 [1948], David Lack, Notes (for 1988 edition), Darwin's Finches, page xv,
      Steadman (1982) suggests that Darwin's finches are so closely related to the South American blue-black grassquit (Volatinia jacarina), that all 14 species plus the grassquit should be considered congeners within a new...
    • The molecular work also makes a compelling case that Darwin's finches were originally grassquits.1999, Peter R. Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches, page xv

Forms of grassquit

pluralgrassquits

Origin of grassquit

From grass + quit (“small passerine bird”).

Words formed from grassquit

  • black-faced grassquit
  • blue-black grassquit
  • Cuban grassquit
  • dull-coloured grassquit
  • sooty grassquit
  • yellow-faced grassquit
  • yellow-shouldered grassquit

Questions about grassquit

What does grassquit mean?
Grassquit means any of several small tropical birds now placed in the tanager family Thraupidae (but previously in Emberizidae), common in the West Indies and in countries of Central and South America around the Caribbean Sea.
What part of speech is grassquit?
Grassquit is a noun.
What is the plural of grassquit?
The plural of grassquit is grassquits.

Words near grassquit in the dictionary

  1. grasspeas
  2. grassplat
  3. grassplats
  4. grassplot
  5. grassplots
  6. grassquit
  7. grassquits
  8. grassroot
  9. grassrooter
  10. grassrooters
  11. grassroots

Source and license

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