dunlin
noun
dunlin is a noun meaning “A small wading bird, Calidris alpina, found along the coast and having a distinctive black belly patch in its breeding plumage. A type of stint” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-U-N-L-I-N, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of dunlin is dunlins.
What does dunlin mean?
noun
- 1
A small wading bird, Calidris alpina, found along the coast and having a distinctive black belly patch in its breeding plumage. A type of stint.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of dunlin
- dunlins plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is dunlin?
Dunlin appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 121,279th 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).
Dunlin in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Calidris alpina:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | bécasseau variable |
| German | Alpenstrandläufer |
| Spanish | playero, correlimos |
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 dunlin come from?
A diminutive of dun.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).