Word.ws English Dictionary

kangaroo paw

kangaroo paw noun: any of various perennial flowering plants of the family Haemodoraceae, endemic to the south-west of Western Australia.

kangaroo paw: any of various perennial flowering plants of the family Haemodoraceae, endemic to the south-west of...
Image: Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

kangaroo paw (plural kangaroo paws)

  1. Any of various perennial flowering plants of the family Haemodoraceae, endemic to the south-west of Western Australia.
    • Spring flowers everywhere—freesias in throng, and startling growths of kangaroo paw with its dark red, vividly red stalks.1984, Helen Garner, Yellow Notebook: Diaries 1978-1987, Text Publishing, published 2022, page 118

Forms of kangaroo paw

pluralkangaroo paws

Origin of kangaroo paw

Named for the shape of the unopened flower (lower left in picture), which resembles the paws of a kangaroo.

Questions about kangaroo paw

What does kangaroo paw mean?
Kangaroo paw means any of various perennial flowering plants of the family Haemodoraceae, endemic to the south-west of Western Australia.
What part of speech is kangaroo paw?
Kangaroo paw is a noun.
What is the plural of kangaroo paw?
The plural of kangaroo paw is kangaroo paws.

Words near kangaroo paw in the dictionary

  1. kangaroo jackets
  2. kangaroo meat
  3. kangaroo mice
  4. kangaroo mother care
  5. kangaroo mouse
  6. kangaroo paw
  7. kangaroo paws
  8. kangaroo piss
  9. kangaroo pocket
  10. kangaroo pockets
  11. Kangaroo Point

Source and license

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