Word.ws English Dictionary

thornbill

/ˈθɔːnˌbɪl/US/ˈθoɹnˌbɪl/

thornbill noun: any of the passerine birds of the genus Acanthiza, native to Australia.

thornbill: any of the passerine birds of the genus Acanthiza, native to Australia
Image: JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

thornbill (plural thornbills)

  1. Any of the passerine birds of the genus Acanthiza, native to Australia.
  2. Any of the hummingbirds of the genera Chalcostigma and Ramphomicron, native to the Americas.

Forms of thornbill

pluralthornbills

Origin of thornbill

From thorn + bill.

Words formed from thornbill

  • brown thornbill
  • King Island brown thornbill
  • buff-rumped thornbill
  • chestnut-rumped thornbill
  • inland thornbill
  • mountain thornbill
  • Papuan thornbill
  • slaty-backed thornbill
  • slender-billed thornbill
  • striated thornbill
  • Tasmanian thornbill
  • western thornbill
  • yellow-rumped thornbill

Questions about thornbill

What does thornbill mean?
Thornbill means any of the passerine birds of the genus Acanthiza, native to Australia.
What part of speech is thornbill?
Thornbill is a noun.
How do you pronounce thornbill?
Thornbill is pronounced /ˈθoɹnˌbɪl/ (US).
What is the plural of thornbill?
The plural of thornbill is thornbills.

Words near thornbill in the dictionary

  1. thornback
  2. thornbacks
  3. Thornber
  4. Thornberry
  5. Thornberrys
  6. thornbill
  7. thornbills
  8. thornbird
  9. thornbirds
  10. Thornbrugh
  11. Thornburg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thornbill (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-thornbill.wav.

Cite this entry: “thornbill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thornbill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.