Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🦆 Wild birds 🍗 Game bird meat
wildfowl

wildfowl

4.5
Wild birds like ducks and geese that live near water and are often hunted
  • noun
  • /ˈwaɪldˌfaʊl/
  • UK
translation icon : aves salvajes
  • Some 149 bird species have been recorded at Bundala when the wintering wildfowl are at their peak.

Examples

  • Hunters often wait for the early morning fog to lift, revealing the wildfowl gathered by the pond.

  • The wildlife reserve is a sanctuary for wildfowl, providing them safety from hunters and natural predators.

  • They began to see signs proclaiming the land to be a wildfowl preservation area.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • During the autumn months, many migratory wildfowl can be seen flying south across the sky.

Synonyms

game bird
vswildfowl
1 3.2

A bird like a pheasant that people hunt for food or sport

focuses on water-associated birds like ducks and geese rather than all hunted birds

Antonyms

domestic fowl
2.8

Birds like chickens and ducks that people keep for eggs or meat

How Wild

wildfowl
  • UK
4.5
free-range
8 3.0

Surface Forms

wildfowl singular
wildfowl plural

Morphology

wildfowl = wild + fowl (transparent) = wild + fowl

The compound is a straightforward combination of 'wild' and 'fowl' meaning wild birds, which learners can derive directly.

Etymology

Wildfowl is made of two simple parts: wild ('not tame') and fowl ('bird'). It originally meant wild birds like ducks and geese, so today it refers to those birds often found in nature and sometimes hunted.