Other forms: shrikes
A shrike is a songbird that impales its prey on thorns. A red-backed shrike, the shrike's larder, spot a shrike.
It has a hooked bill but no talons, so it wedges what it catches on a thorn or barbed wire to hold it while it feeds, and the store it builds up is called a larder. It is called the butcher bird for exactly that habit.
1nounshrikeA songbird that impales its prey on thorns.
“A shrike had left a dead beetle stuck on the thorns of the hedge.”
shrike is a bird.
Old English scric, from the same root as shriek and screech, named after the bird's call.
Old English
sċrīc — shrike, thrush
Middle English
*schrike
English, today
shrike
From Middle English schrike, schryke, from Old English sċrīc (“shrike, thrush”), from the same root as shriek and screech, named after the bird's cry. Compare Icelandic skríkja (“shrieker, shrike”), Swedish skrika (“jay”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA