sparrow
noun
- kind of bird
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈspæɹəʊ/ / /ˈspaɹəw/ / /ˈspæɹoʊ/
name
Etymology: From Middle English Sparow.
- A surname.
noun
Etymology: From Middle English sparwe, sparowe, from Old English spearwa, from Proto-West Germanic *sparwō, from Proto-Germanic *sparwô, from Proto-Indo-European *spḗr (“sparrow”). Cognate with Dutch spreeuw (“starling”), Alemannic German Spar (“sparrow”), German Sperling (“sparrow”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål spurv (“sparrow”), Norwegian Nynorsk sporv (“sparrow”), Swedish sparv (“sparrow”), Breton frao (“crow”), Tocharian A ṣpārāñ, Ancient Greek ψάρ (psár, “starling”), as well as Italian sparviero and Italian sparviere (“hawk”).
- The house sparrow, Passer domesticus; a small bird with a short bill, and brown, white and gray feathers.
“Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a sparrow, but by putting one leg forward first, and then the other.”
“In a poem by Sappho, Aphrodite is represented as riding in a car drawn by sparrows.”
- A member of the family Passeridae, comprising small Old World songbirds.
- A member of the family Passerellidae (or Emberizidae, under classification systems that subsume the New World sparrows under Emberizidae), comprising small New World songbirds.
- Generically, any small, nondescript bird.
- A quick-witted, lively person.
“cockney sparrow”
“I take it there 's scarcely a happier fellow alive than your honest town-bred smoke-dried cockney sparrow.”