Word.ws English Dictionary

miners' canary

miners' canary noun: a caged bird kept caged in mines because its demise provided a warning of dangerous levels of toxic gases.

Noun

miners' canary (plural miners' canaries)

  1. A caged bird kept caged in mines because its demise provided a warning of dangerous levels of toxic gases.
  2. (idiomatic) Any thing, especially an organism, whose demise or distress provides an early warning of danger.

Forms of miners' canary

pluralminers' canaries
alternative formcanary in a coal mine
alternative formminer's canary

Questions about miners' canary

What does miners' canary mean?
Miners' canary means a caged bird kept caged in mines because its demise provided a warning of dangerous levels of toxic gases.
What part of speech is miners' canary?
Miners' canary is a noun.
What is the plural of miners' canary?
The plural of miners' canary is miners' canaries.

Words near miners' canary in the dictionary

  1. miners
  2. miners moss
  3. Miners Rest
  4. miners safety candlestick
  5. miners' canaries
  6. miners' canary
  7. miners' moss
  8. miners' safety candlestick
  9. Minerva
  10. minerval
  11. minervals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: miners' canary (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-miners' canary.ogg.

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