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Glite Dictionary
jenny wren

jenny wren

9.8
A small lively brown bird with a short upright tail that eats insects
  • noun
  • UK
translation icon : wren
  • Jenny Wren

Examples

  • The jenny wren sang cheerfully as it flitted between the branches of the trees.

  • In the garden, a jenny wren hopped across the ground searching for insects.

  • During our walk, we spotted a jenny wren with its distinctive upright tail perched on a fence.

Synonyms

wren
vsjenny wren
5 2.2

A small active brown bird that sings and lives near gardens

is a more specific lively form emphasizing insect diet and particular traits
Troglodytes troglodytes
vsjenny wren
  • UK
9.9

A very small brown bird that lives across Europe and Asia and sings loudly

is the common lively small bird noted for insect diet and upright short tail

Surface Forms

jenny wren singular
jenny wrens plural

Morphology

jenny + wren

The constituent 'wren' clearly signals a small bird, so a B1 learner who knows 'wren' will likely guess this is a type of bird. However, 'jenny' is not transparently interpretable here (it reads like a personal name or an unrelated label), so the specific sense and attributes of the species cannot be fully derived from the parts. Because the headword gives partial cueing but the modifier is lexicalized/arbitrary, the item is semi-transparent.

Etymology

Jenny wren probably comes from people using the woman's name jenny for very small animals, because the little, busy wren hops and flies quickly like a tiny woman. So jenny wren came to mean a 'small, lively brown wren'.