Word.ws English Dictionary

yardbirds

yardbirds is the plural of yardbird.

Meaning of yardbird

Noun

yardbird (plural yardbirds)

  1. (US, slang) A chicken.
  2. (US, slang) A person who is imprisoned.
    • The working convict is a rare exception, sometimes envied because his time is occupied, sometimes derided for his deviance from the yardbird norm.1985, John P. Conrad, “Charting a Course for Imprisonment Policy,”, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, volume 478, page 126
  3. (US, slang) A soldier who is required to perform menial work on the grounds of a military base.
    • As the Marines expanded to war strength, Lou Diamond was the ideal liaison between crusty old-timers and impressionable recruits. He taught quick action by threats of yardbird detail.1943 July 5, “In the Rough”, in Time

Questions about yardbirds

What is yardbirds the plural of?
Yardbirds is the plural of yardbird.

Words near yardbirds in the dictionary

  1. yardarming
  2. yardarming it
  3. yardarms
  4. yardarms it
  5. yardbird
  6. yardbirds
  7. Yarde
  8. yarded
  9. yarden
  10. yardens
  11. yarder

Source and license

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