Word.ws English Dictionary

muttonbird

muttonbird is the alternative form of mutton bird.

Meaning of mutton bird

Noun

mutton bird (plural mutton birds)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) Any of various seabirds whose flesh is said to taste like mutton when cooked, especially Puffinus griseus, Puffinus tenuirostris, or a petrel of the genus Pterodroma.
    • He dubbed them mutton-birds, for they came like lambs to the slaughter.1941, Ernestine Hill, My Love Must Wait, A&R Classics, published 2013, page 186

Forms of muttonbird

pluralmuttonbirds

Questions about muttonbird

What is muttonbird the alternative form of?
Muttonbird is the alternative form of mutton bird.

Words near muttonbird in the dictionary

  1. mutton-fisted
  2. mutton-monger
  3. mutton-mongers
  4. mutton-thumper
  5. mutton-thumpers
  6. muttonbird
  7. muttonbirder
  8. muttonbirders
  9. muttonbirding
  10. muttonbirds
  11. muttonchop

Source and license

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