Word.ws English Dictionary

whippoorwill

Syllables: whip·poor·will/ˈwɪp.əˌwɪl/US/ˈʍɪp.ɚˌwɪl/

whippoorwill noun: a nocturnal insectivorous bird of North America (Antrostomus vociferus, syn. Caprimulgus vociferus), a type of nightjar, named after its characteristic call.

whippoorwill: a nocturnal insectivorous bird of North America (Antrostomus vociferus, syn. Caprimulgus...
Image: Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

whippoorwill (plural whippoorwills)

  1. A nocturnal insectivorous bird of North America (Antrostomus vociferus, syn. Caprimulgus vociferus), a type of nightjar, named after its characteristic call.
    • “Seems like I heard a whippoorwill callinʼ, and I thought to myself, Go on away from here, weʼll whip ole Will when we find him.”1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 55
  2. The distinctive call of the above bird.
    • The bird sang his whippoorwills all night.
    • From across the road a bird sang 'Whippoorwill, whippoorwill!'2023 December 12, Timothy C. Baker, Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories, MIT Press, →ISBN

whippoorwill meaning in Tamil

whippoorwill in Tamil

நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும் பறவைகளில், இது ஒரு சிறப்பு இனமாகும்

Examples of whippoorwill in a sentence

  • Somewhere in the darkness a few cold-sounding frogs lamented the lost summer, and the bird which the Chippewa called muck-a-wiss sang whippoorwill.1959, Thomas William Duncan, Big River, Big Man:
  • For I'm sure 'tis a bird that now sings 'Whippoorwill, Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill!'1857, Grace Greenwood, The Little Pilgrim, page 91:

Forms of whippoorwill

pluralwhippoorwills
alternative formwhip-poor-will
alternative formwhippowill
alternative formwhip-o-will
alternative formwhip-o'-will

Origin of whippoorwill

Imitative of its note.

Words formed from whippoorwill

  • eastern whippoorwill
  • Mexican whippoorwill

Questions about whippoorwill

What does whippoorwill mean?
Whippoorwill means a nocturnal insectivorous bird of North America (Antrostomus vociferus, syn. Caprimulgus vociferus), a type of nightjar, named after its characteristic call.
What is whippoorwill in Tamil?
Whippoorwill in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும் பறவைகளில், இது ஒரு சிறப்பு இனமாகும். See Whippoorwill meaning in Tamil.
How do you use whippoorwill in a sentence?
Somewhere in the darkness a few cold-sounding frogs lamented the lost summer, and the bird which the Chippewa called muck-a-wiss sang whippoorwill.
What part of speech is whippoorwill?
Whippoorwill is a noun.
How do you pronounce whippoorwill?
Whippoorwill is pronounced /ˈʍɪp.ɚˌwɪl/ (US).
What is the plural of whippoorwill?
The plural of whippoorwill is whippoorwills.

Words near whippoorwill in the dictionary

  1. whippo
  2. whippomorph
  3. whippomorphan
  4. whippomorphans
  5. whippomorphs
  6. whippoorwill
  7. whippoorwills
  8. whippos
  9. whippowill
  10. whippowills
  11. Whipps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whippoorwill (page history and authors); whippoorwill (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-whippoorwill.wav.

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