Word.ws English Dictionary

pettychaps

pettychaps noun: any of several species of small European passerine songbirds, including the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), the chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus spp.), and the western Orphean warbler (Sylvia hortensis).

pettychaps: any of several species of small European passerine songbirds, including the willow warbler...
Image: Andreas Trepte, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pettychaps (plural pettychaps)

  1. Any of several species of small European passerine songbirds, including the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), the chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus spp.), and the western Orphean warbler (Sylvia hortensis).

Forms of pettychaps

pluralpettychaps

Origin of pettychaps

Uncertain. Probably imitative of the bird’s call, with influence from petty (“small”) and either chap (“jaw; bill of a bird”) or chap (“person”). Alternatively, perhaps directly from petty (in turn from Middle English pety (“tiny”)) and chaps (“jaws”). Attested from the 1670s.

Questions about pettychaps

What does pettychaps mean?
Pettychaps means any of several species of small European passerine songbirds, including the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), the chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus spp.), and the western Orphean warbler (Sylvia hortensis).
What part of speech is pettychaps?
Pettychaps is a noun.
What is the plural of pettychaps?
The plural of pettychaps is pettychaps.

Words near pettychaps in the dictionary

  1. petty-fogs
  2. petty-house
  3. petty-houses
  4. pettyauger
  5. pettyaugers
  6. pettychaps
  7. pettyfog
  8. pettyfogged
  9. pettyfogger
  10. pettyfoggers
  11. pettyfogging

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pettychaps (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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