Definitions

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

  • noun A waterbird, especially a swimming bird.
  • noun Swimming game birds, such as ducks and geese, considered as a group.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as water-birds.
  • noun In a restricted sense, swimming birds, especially those which, as the Anseres, are used for food or for any reason engage the attention of sportsmen.

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

  • noun Any bird that frequents the water, or lives about rivers, lakes, etc., or on or near the sea; an aquatic fowl; -- used also collectively.

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

  • noun birds, such as ducks, geese and swans, that spend most of their non-flying time on water; especially those of the family Anatidae

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

  • noun freshwater aquatic bird

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

water +‎ fowl

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word waterfowl.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Might you have a spare pond, err, list, for waterfowl, reesetee?

    November 10, 2008

  • Not at present. But you never know what'll be next. I may some day deconstruct my enormous mega-lists and sort out by type. :-)

    November 10, 2008