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hoatzin

/ˈwɑːtsɪn/noun

hoatzin is a noun meaning “A bird of the species Opisthocomus hoazin of the order Opisthocomiformes, with claws on the wing fingers of the juvenile and an enlarged crop used as…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-A-T-Z-I-N, and it appears about once in every 62 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of hoatzin is hoatzins.

What does hoatzin mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A bird of the species Opisthocomus hoazin of the order Opisthocomiformes, with claws on the wing fingers of the juvenile and an enlarged crop used as a rumen.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce hoatzin?

  • UK /ˈwætsɪn/
  • UK /ˈwætsiːn/
  • US /ˈwɑːtsɪn/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-hoatzin.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of hoatzin

  • hoatzins plural
  • hoactzin
  • hoazin

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is hoatzin?

Hoatzin appears about once in every 62 million words in written English, the 246,401st 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).

Hoatzin in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense bird, Opisthocomus hoazin:

LanguageWords
Frenchhoazin, sassa
GermanHoatzin
Portuguesecigana
Spanishhoacín, hoatzín, chenchena, shansho, guacharaca de agua, pava hedionda

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 hoatzin come from?

From Nahuatl huāctzin (which probably designated a different bird).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).