lyrebird
noun
lyrebird is a noun meaning “Either of two large ground-dwelling Australian songbirds, of the genus Menura, notable for their extraordinary ability to mimic natural and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled L-Y-R-E-B-I-R-D, and it appears about once in every 60 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of lyrebird is lyrebirds.
What does lyrebird mean?
noun
- 1
Either of two large ground-dwelling Australian songbirds, of the genus Menura, notable for their extraordinary ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce lyrebird?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-lyrebird.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of lyrebird
- lyrebirds plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is lyrebird?
Lyrebird appears about once in every 60 million words in written English, the 243,301st 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).
Lyrebird in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Australian songbirds of the genus Menura:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Leierschwanz |
| Spanish | ave lira |
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 lyrebird come from?
From lyre + bird, so named because of the beautiful tail feathers of the male of one species, the superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae), which can be erected to look like a lyre.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).