Other forms: pheasants
A pheasant is a long-tailed game bird with a bright metallic head. Shoot pheasant, a cock pheasant, roast pheasant.
The male is copper and green with a white collar and the female is a plain brown, which is the usual pattern in ground-nesting birds. Millions are reared and released for shooting each year in Britain, so the wild population is hard to measure.
1nounpheasantA long-tailed game bird with a bright metallic head.
“A pheasant ran across the country lane in front of our car.”
pheasant is a bird.
Latin phasianus came from Greek phasianos, the bird of the river Phasis in Colchis, from where it was said to have come.
Old English
wōrhana
Ancient Greek
φᾱσιανός
Latin
phāsiānus
Old French
fesan
Middle English
fesaunt
English, today
pheasant
From Middle English fesaunt, fesant, from Old French fesan, from Latin phāsiānus, from Ancient Greek φᾱσιανός, meaning “[bird] of the river Φᾶσις”, from where, it was supposed, the bird spread to the west. Replaced native Old English wōrhana, a variant of mōrhana. More at moorhen.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA