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sparrow

UK/ˈspæɹəʊ/US/ˈspæɹoʊ/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,175 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: sparrows

A sparrow is the small brown street bird that hops about in noisy groups. Nothing special to look at, and everywhere.

House sparrows have lived alongside people for thousands of years and follow them wherever they build. Their numbers have fallen sharply in British cities, which was noticed only because they had always been taken for granted. The word gives English sparrowhawk, which hunts them, and the phrase up with the sparrows means awake very early. Cockney sparrow is an affectionate name for a Londoner.

Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of sparrow

  1. 1nounsparrowA small brown and grey bird common in towns.B2

    “A dozen sparrows squabbled over the crumbs.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *spḗr — sparrow

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *sparwô

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *sparwō

  4. Old English

    spearwa

  5. Middle English

    sparewe

  6. English, today

    sparrow

From Middle English sparewe, sparowe, sparu, sparwe, spearewe, sperrewe, from Old English spearwa, from Proto-West Germanic sparwō, from Proto-Germanic sparwô, from Proto-Indo-European spḗr (“sparrow”). 2 Cognate with yol sparrowe (“sparrow”), frr sparag, spåri (“sparrow”), stq Spräie (“sparrow”), gsw and lb Spatz (“sparrow”), Dutch spreeuw (“starling”), German Spatz, Sperling (“sparrow”), wym śpielik, śpjelik, śpjeliḱ (“sparrow”), Yiddish שפּערל (“sparrow”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål spurv (“sparrow”), Faroese spurvur (“sparrow”), Norwegian Nynorsk sporv (“sparrow”), Swedish sparv (“sparrow”), Gothic 𐍃𐍀𐌰𐍂𐍅𐌰 (“sparrow”); also Latin parra (“bird of ill omen”), Ancient Greek ψάρ, ψήρ (“starling”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Birds

First appears in chapter 19 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

sparrow in the wild

  • Old World sparrows are groups of small passerine birds forming the family Passeridae.

    Old World sparrow

  • One of 28 species in the genus Passer, the house sparrow is native to most of Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, and a large part of Asia.

    House sparrow

  • The song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) is a medium-sized New World sparrow.

    Song sparrow

  • The vesper sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) is a medium-sized New World sparrow.

    Vesper sparrow

  • New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae.

    New World sparrow

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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.