Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A large stork (Jabiru mycteria) of South and Central America and Mexico, having white plumage with a pink band at the neck and a naked head.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A large stork-like bird, Mycteria americana.
  • noun This name has also been applied to two large, stork-like birds of the Old World, somewhat smaller than the South American jabiru and having the head and neck feathered instead of bare. The African jabiru, Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis, is glossy black above, white below; the primaries are also white. The Australian jabiru, Xenorhynchus australis, is of a greenish black above.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) One of several large wading birds of the genera Mycteria and Xenorhynchus, allied to the storks in form and habits.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A species of bird Jabiru mycteria in the monotypic genus Jabiru, of the stork family Ciconiidae, endemic to the Americas.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun large mostly white Australian stork
  • noun large white stork of warm regions of the world especially America
  • noun large black-and-white stork of tropical Africa; its red bill has a black band around the middle

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Portuguese and American Spanish jabirú, from Tupí.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From a Tupian term such as Old Tupi jabiru, yabi'ru, said to mean either "swollen neck" or "one that spits".

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Examples

Comments

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  • Known officially as the black-necked stork. These things are big. I was riding my bike one day when a jabiru stepped out of the mangroves and it scared the bejeesus out of me. Apart from the legs they are solid, have a sharp beak and take a while to get off the ground.

    There's also a town in the Northern Territory with this name.

    November 22, 2007

  • There's a white Jabiru native to the Americas that is the only member of the Jabiru genus. Yours is "officially" the Asian Black-necked Stork, as you say. It's in the same genus (Ephippiorhynchus) as the Saddle-billed Stork of sub-Saharan Africa.

    December 5, 2007