shoebill
/ˈʃu.bɪl/noun
shoebill is a noun meaning “Balaeniceps rex, a tall wading bird related to the stork, native to tropical African swamps; the sole species of the family Balaenicipitidae” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-H-O-E-B-I-L-L, and it appears about once in every 36 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of shoebill is shoebills.
What does shoebill mean?
noun
- 1
Balaeniceps rex, a tall wading bird related to the stork, native to tropical African swamps; the sole species of the family Balaenicipitidae.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce shoebill?
- /ˈʃu.bɪl/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-shoebill.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of shoebill
- shoebills plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is shoebill?
Shoebill appears about once in every 36 million words in written English, the 184,844th 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).
Shoebill in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense wading bird:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | bec-en-sabot du Nil, abu-markub |
| German | Schuhschnabel |
| Portuguese | bico-de-tamanco |
| Spanish | picozapato |
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 shoebill come from?
From shoe + bill.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).