| Library / English Dictionary |
SPARROW
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Small brownish European songbird
Synonyms:
dunnock; hedge sparrow; Prunella modularis; sparrow
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("sparrow" is a kind of...):
accentor (small sparrow-like songbird of mountainous regions of Eurasia)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Any of several small dull-colored singing birds feeding on seeds or insects
Synonyms:
sparrow; true sparrow
Classified under:
Nouns denoting animals
Hypernyms ("sparrow" is a kind of...):
passeriform bird; passerine (perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "sparrow"):
English sparrow; house sparrow; Passer domesticus (small hardy brown-and-grey bird native to Europe)
Passer montanus; tree sparrow (Eurasian sparrow smaller than the house sparrow)
Holonyms ("sparrow" is a member of...):
family Passeridae; Passeridae (true sparrows: Old world birds formerly considered weaverbirds)
Context examples:
But the sparrow sat on the outside of the window, and cried “Carter! thy cruelty shall cost thee thy life!”
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Researchers studied the resilience of four species of coastal birds, including the endangered saltmarsh sparrow.
(Coastal birds can weather the storm, but not the sea, National Science Foundation)
When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their smoky feathers!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
There, cried the sparrow, thou cruel villain, thou hast killed my friend the dog.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
We are progressing. My friend has now a whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The research found that two of the species in the study, saltmarsh sparrows and clapper rails, are declining from increased coastal flooding caused by higher sea levels.
(Coastal birds can weather the storm, but not the sea, National Science Foundation)
“Not wretch enough yet!” said the sparrow.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
