hornbill
/ˈhɔːɹn.bɪl/noun
hornbill is a noun meaning “Any of various birds of the family Bucerotidae, with bills resembling a cow's horns. Many species have a casque above the bill, and many imprison…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-R-N-B-I-L-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of hornbill is hornbills.
What does hornbill mean?
noun
- 1
Any of various birds of the family Bucerotidae, with bills resembling a cow's horns. Many species have a casque above the bill, and many imprison their young in a tree.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce hornbill?
- UK /ˈhɔːn.bɪl/
- US /ˈhɔːɹn.bɪl/
Hornbill has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-hornbill.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of hornbill
- hornbills plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is hornbill?
Hornbill appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th 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).
Hornbill in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense bird:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | calao |
| German | Nashornvogel |
| Portuguese | calau |
| Spanish | cálao |
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 hornbill come from?
From horn + bill.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).