Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🐦 A blackbird 🐦 A thrush
redwing

redwing

9.0
A small brown bird with red on its sides and under its wings often seen in Europe
  • noun
  • UK
translation icon : zorzal
  • I heard a lot of fieldfares and redwings passed through early.

Examples

  • Right after the gun went thuh! and nobody in there heard it but me, and that is why the crowd didn't scatter like the flock of redwings they looked like but stayed pressed in, locked together by the steam of their dancing and the music, which would not let them go.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • The melodious song of the redwing can be heard throughout the countryside in spring.

  • There I carefully pricked a hole in each end with a pin, blew out the eggy insides, put the shell in a gray cardboard egg carton, and labeled it: REDWING BLACKBIRD.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • During migration season, I often see redwings flying in flocks across the fields.

  • As I walked through the forest, a redwing perched on a branch caught my eye.

Synonyms

thrush
vsredwing
4 3.6

A small to medium songbird with brown back feathers and a spotted breast

is a specific species within that broader bird group with reddish flanks
Turdus iliacus
vsredwing
  • Specialized
9.9

A small bird with reddish sides and a pale stripe above the eye

is the everyday English name used for the same bird

Surface Forms

redwing singular
redwings plural

Morphology

redwing = red + wing (transparent) = red + wing

The compound denotes the bird's reddish flanks/underwings, a straightforward descriptive compound.

Etymology

Redwing for the European thrush comes from red + wing, meaning 'red wing', named for the bird's reddish flanks and underwings. So redwing now means the small thrush you can recognize by its red sides during migration.