Word.ws English Dictionary

ornithonymy

ornithonymy noun: the naming of birds; the creation of common names for birds; the use of bird names.

Noun

ornithonymy (uncountable)

  1. The naming of birds; the creation of common names for birds; the use of bird names.
    • Mermnad king of Lydia in whose family ornithonymy may have been rife .1984, Jaan Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary, page 176
    • The complexity of ornithonymy increases the further back in time one looks.2016, James Lambert, “Ornithonymy and Lexicographical Selection Criteria”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 30, number 1, pages 39–62

Origin of ornithonymy

From ornithonym + -y.

Questions about ornithonymy

What does ornithonymy mean?
Ornithonymy means the naming of birds; the creation of common names for birds; the use of bird names.
What part of speech is ornithonymy?
Ornithonymy is a noun.

Words near ornithonymy in the dictionary

  1. ornithomorphs
  2. ornithon
  3. ornithons
  4. ornithonym
  5. ornithonyms
  6. ornithonymy
  7. ornithophaenology
  8. ornithophage
  9. ornithophages
  10. ornithophagic
  11. ornithophagous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ornithonymy (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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