Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

fauna

UK/ˈfɔːnə/US/ˈfɔːnə/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,396 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: faunas

Fauna is the animals of a region taken together. The local fauna.

It is paired with flora, which is the plants, and both come from Roman gods. Island fauna is the most vulnerable there is, since there is nowhere to retreat to.

Nordisk familjebok · Public domain

Definitions of fauna

  1. 1nounfaunaThe animals of a region taken together.B2+

    “The fauna of the island included nothing larger than a rabbit.”

fauna is animals.

Where it comes from

New Latin fauna is taken from Fauna, a Roman goddess of the countryside and sister of Faunus.

  1. Latin

    Fauna

  2. New Latin

    fauna

  3. English, today

    fauna

Built from

  • Faunus · Latin — god of forests and herdsmen

New Latin fauna, from Latin Fauna, sister of Faunus (“god of forests and herdsmen”); akin to Ancient Greek θαῦνον (“wild animal, beast”), θώς (“jackal, wild dog; panther”), xpg δάος (“wolf”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

fauna in the wild

  • The settlement of Australia by Indigenous Australians between 48,000 and 70,000 years ago and by Europeans from 1788, has significantly affected the fauna.

    Fauna of Australia

  • To target threats to the survival of its fauna, Australia has passed wide-ranging federal and state legislation and established numerous protected areas.

    Fauna of Australia

  • Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as biota.

    Fauna

  • The fauna of Ireland comprises all animal species inhabiting the island of Ireland and its surrounding waters.

    Fauna of Ireland

  • But the age of this fauna was comparatively modern in the earth's history.

    Principles of Geology: or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology· Sir Charles Lyell

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.