chaffinch
/ˈt͡ʃæfɪnt͡ʃ/noun
chaffinch is a noun meaning “A small passerine bird, Fringilla coelebs, of the finch family, found throughout Europe and eastward to Iran and eastern Mediterranean coastlands” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-A-F-F-I-N-C-H, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chaffinch is chaffinches.
What does chaffinch mean?
noun
- 1
A small passerine bird, Fringilla coelebs, of the finch family, found throughout Europe and eastward to Iran and eastern Mediterranean coastlands.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chaffinch?
- /ˈt͡ʃæfɪnt͡ʃ/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-chaffinch.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of chaffinch
- chaffinches plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chaffinch?
Chaffinch appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Chaffinch in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense bird:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | pinson, pinson des arbres |
| German | Buchfink |
| Portuguese | tentilhão, chupim |
| Spanish | pinzón vulgar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does chaffinch come from?
From Middle English chaffynch, chaffynche, caffynche, equivalent to chaff + finch. However, more recently the first element has been argued to derive from the same root as Old English cæfed (“ornamented”) and cæfing (“hair-ornament”), thus meaning "ornamented finch, colourful finch".
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).