Word.ws English Dictionary

sheldrake

sheldrake noun: an Old World duck of the genus Tadorna (shelducks).

Noun

sheldrake (plural sheldrakes)

  1. An Old World duck of the genus Tadorna (shelducks).
    Synonyms:
    vulpanser
    1. A male shelduck.
  2. A merganser.
  3. The call sign for an artillery officer.

Proper noun capitalized: Sheldrake

Sheldrake (plural Sheldrakes)

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname.

Synonyms of sheldrake

Forms of sheldrake

Noun
pluralsheldrakes
Proper noun
pluralSheldrakes
alternative formSheldrick

Origin of sheldrake

From Middle English sheld- (“parti-colored”) (akin to Middle Dutch shillede) + drake (“male duck”).

From sheldrake, a nickname for a vain or showy person.

Questions about sheldrake

What does sheldrake mean?
Sheldrake means an Old World duck of the genus Tadorna (shelducks).
What part of speech is sheldrake?
Sheldrake can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of sheldrake?
The plural of sheldrake is sheldrakes.

Words near sheldrake in the dictionary

  1. sheldgeese
  2. sheldgoose
  3. Sheldon
  4. Sheldonian
  5. Sheldonville
  6. sheldrake
  7. sheldrakes
  8. sheldrickite
  9. Sheldru
  10. shelduck
  11. shelducks

Source and license

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